Becoming a Time Lady
by Pelahnar
Summary: After leaving Messaline in her stolen spaceship, Jenny unexpectedly runs into Captain Jack Harkness and together they set off to find the Doctor again, having plenty of their own adventures along the way. Currently: Jenny remembers an unsolved mystery on Messaline, and they return to her home planet to find there is more wrong there than she could have guessed.
1. Jenny Meets Jack: Part 1

**Becoming a Time Lady**

**Disclaimer: I do not own Doctor Who or Torchwood.**

**Author's Note: This story will hold the events in Doctor Who Series 1-6 and Torchwood Series 1, 2 and Children of the Earth as either already happened or going to. As new Doctor Who episodes come out, I'll integrate new information. ****I may use Miracle Day in a separate, companion story, but if so that won't be for a very long time. In this story, Jack left Earth after Children of the Earth and has yet to go back. I'm also assuming that the dates on Jenny's planet go by the same calendar as ours, so they're in the year 6012 (at least to begin with) putting her about a thousand years after Jack's home time. Ok? Good.**

_**Jenny Meets Jack: First Encounter**_

"I've got the whole universe. Planets to save, civilizations to rescue, creatures to defeat – and a whole lot of running to do!" Jenny laughed, reaching for the controls of the spaceship. It was amazing, all the information that had been packed into her head while growing in the progenation machine. The information that had been programmed in. Aside from knowledge of fighting, war, and the Creation myth, a whole plethora of other stuff was there just waiting to be used – most importantly, at the moment, was that she knew exactly how to work the spaceship.

Soon, though, she was far away from the planet Messaline and only needed to do one more thing before the craft could fly itself. "Destination?" The ship's computer prompted in a female voice.

Jenny's smile faltered. It was all very well to declare she was off to save the universe – but how to start? "Are there any distress signals that you can find nearby?" She asked.

The computer whirred. "Processing request..." It said, and after a few more seconds, replied, "Negative. No distress signals detected."

"Anything out of the ordinary at all?"

"Negative."

Jenny sighed. Well, she supposed, that _would _have been a bit easy. "In that case..." She trailed off, then nodded decisively. "In that case, head for the planet Earth – but keep scanning for distress signals and if you find any, alter course immediately."

"Clarify," the computer said.

"Clarify what?" She thought she'd been perfectly clear.

"Clarify. Alter course how?"

Jenny sighed again, this time in exasperation. Communicating with this computer was going to take some getting used to. "Toward the distress signal. If you pick up a distress signal, trace it to its source and alter course to wherever the source is." Surely that couldn't be misunderstood. "All right?"

"Confirmed."

"Oh, and if you do, let me know about it," she added quickly.

"Confirmed."

_It's not like a TARDIS. _Jenny mused sadly, sitting back in her chair. Then she sat up straight again as she realized what she'd just thought. _Wait a minute! What's a TARDIS? _She wondered. TARDIS. She was sure the word meant nothing to her. Maybe it was something else that the progenation machine had told her? Interesting that it had not come with a definition though, if so.

Settling back once more, Jenny decided she needed to figure out exactly what all she knew. She couldn't just go on not knowing she could do something until confronted with the necessity. She closed her eyes and began, for lack of a better word, cataloguing all the information she'd been infused with. For a long time, she sat motionless, letting facts come to her consciousness and then letting go again. As it turned out, the progenation machine had given her what seemed to be the collective knowledge of the human race – including the history of Earth, the mechanics of their technology, and information on all alien races they had encountered since First Contact in the 21st century.

Finally, her mental run-through was complete. She once again marvelled at the sheer volume of things she hadn't known she knew; her brain immediately showed her that she also knew exactly how it had worked. Given the right materials, she could build her own progenation machine.

_Precisely the point_. She thought to herself. _If, somehow, as few as one person were left alone on the planet and all the machines were destroyed, they could rebuild – no matter who it was that had been left, so long as they were born of the machine._

There were other reasons for colonizing this way. The progenation machines allowed for rapid population growth, which was necessary when starting up life on the new world. But, as a fact of the machine, they were born as adults – Jenny calculated her age of maturity to be about 25 or 30. And because of _that_, they got neither a childhood nor a childhood education. Instead, they just knew everything they need to know as soon as they stepped out of the machine.

No one else – in all those generations, all the children of the machine during that week of war – no one had bothered to examine their knowledge beyond the war and the Source. If they had, they would've _known _that the Source was actually a terraforming device. But she understood why they hadn't – unlocking all the information the machine had given her had been a time-consuming process. A process, moreover, that had required a nearly meditative, relaxed state. Not something achieved during wartime.

_I hope they learn, now that the war's over. _She thought. She vaguely wondered whether she should go back and make sure they did, but quickly discarded the idea. With the new terraforming had come a sense of peace; she'd seen it happen. Surely someone would find the secrets in their head and tell the others. _Besides, if I went back now, they'd definitely want the spaceship back and… _she grinned, _And I'm not ready to give it up. Not remotely._

Her grin became a frown as she realized that none of the information she'd been programmed with had included the word she had thought earlier – what was it? TARDIS. She still didn't know what a TARDIS was. But if it hadn't come from the machine, then where _had _it come from?

Shrugging, but making a mental conviction to find the definition of this mysterious word one day, Jenny finally opened her eyes. "Computer?" She said. "How long have we been flying? And do you have a name, or do I just call you 'computer'?"

"We have been flying for 3 days, 10 hours, and 27 minutes," the computer replied. Jenny's eyes widened at the pronouncement. It was longer than she'd expected – and now even less surprising that no one had done this before. That was almost half the length of the whole war! The computer continued, oblivious to her shock. "I will respond to anything you want to call me."

"Erm...in that case, I think I'll case you Sally. It'll be nice to talk to someone with a name – might get lonely, you know with me being the only one on the ship."

"Negative," said Sally the computer.

"Negative _what_?" Jenny cried, hoping that not all conversations with Sally were going to be this infuriating.

"You are not the only one on board."

"Oh," Jenny frowned. "_What_! Sally, explain!" She ordered.

"Twenty-three minutes ago, an intruder was detected to have teleported aboard in the Lower Flight Deck of the ship. The area has been locked off."

Jenny blinked. "An 'intruder'? What kind? And why didn't you tell me about this earlier?" She demanded.

"Classification of intruder: Unknown." Sally replied. "You were not informed because you have not requested to be notified of such things."

"Well, I request it _now_," Jenny said firmly. "Tell me about anything out of the ordinary. Anything at all."

"He is not dead," Sally said.

"_Who _isn't dead?" Jenny groaned. "Clarify!" She was getting the idea that, yes, talking to the computer _was _always going to be this infuriating.

"The intruder that teleported aboard this ship twenty-three minutes ago is not dead."

"That's good or we'd never know what he's doing here. Why are you telling me this?"

"It is out of the ordinary."

"To be alive?"

"Affirmative."

Jenny stared at the blinking red light that was the computer console. "I don't understand," she told it.

"He is not dead."

"Yeah, got that much. All right, who is he then? Basic information."

"Gender: Male. Name: Unknown. Age: Unknown. Date of Birth: Unknown Species: Unknown. Planet of origin: Unknown. Marital Status: Unknown - "

Jenny broke in. "All right! We don't know who he is! Just that he's male, apparently. And not dead."

"Affirmative."

"Do we know anything else?"

After a pause, Sally replied, "He is armed."

"Lovely," Jenny muttered. "Well, I just left a planet where people were fighting for no reason, so don't shoot at him until we find out want he wants, ok?"

"Negative."

"Excuse me? That was an order! Do not fire!" Jenny couldn't help feeling a little bit panicky. If the computer was countermanding her orders...

"The intruder has already been fired upon," Sally replied.

"What!"

"Upon arrival, the intruder triggered the security protocols. Automatic procedures for his termination were carried out."

Jenny gasped. "You tried to kill him? Without even knowing what he wanted?" She cried, disliking this computer more and more. She decided to reprogram it the first chance she got.

"Negative. The intruder was terminated. He is not dead."

Well, that was as clear as mud. How could someone be killed but not be dead? _Then again_, she thought, I _was killed, but I'm not dead_. "Is he a Time Lord?" She wondered aloud.

"Unknown," Sally answered. Jenny rolled her eyes.

"Where is he again?" she asked.

"The Lower Flight Deck."

"All right," Jenny began unbuckling herself. "I'm going down there." After a moment, she added, "Do _not _shoot again until we know what his intentions are."

Jenny reached the Lower Flight Deck in a matter of minutes. She stopped outside the door – which, as Sally had mentioned, had automatically locked when it detected the intruder – and activated a computer screen on the wall. Now that she wasn't actually talking to it, the computer seemed to know what she wanted without her having to tell it. The screen showed video feed from the Lower Flight Deck without prompting.

_I must figure out how that works. _Jenny mused, thinking maybe when she reprogrammed the computer, it would be nice if it responded to thought commands as well as spoken. There'd be fewer misunderstandings that way.

Back to the problem at hand. Jenny examined the man on the screen, who was apparently trying to find a way out, his back to her. Male, as Sally had said, and humanoid, if not actually human. She assumed that if he actually _were _human, the computer would know that. She hoped it would, anyway, having been designed by humans.

_Male, humanoid, and _– as the intruder turned toward the camera and Jenny saw his face, she let out a short gasp, finishing her description in a whisper. "_Gorgeous!_" She breathed.

For a few seconds, she could do nothing but stare. Then she blinked rapidly and shook herself. _Oh, stop it, Jenny_! She berated silently. _He's just a man – and a trespasser at that. He's not even human._

Suppressing the thought that, technically, _she _wasn't really human either, she set her face in an expression that she hoped looked stern and unyielding. Gorgeous he may be, but there was no reason to let him know she thought so. None at all.

Holding her head high, Jenny pressed the button that unlocked and opened the door, then marched in. Evidently startled by her sudden appearance, the intruder spun to face her, gun raised. Jenny opened her mouth to demand he tell her who she was, but she never got that far. A loud siren sounded and Jenny automatically knew what it meant; the onboard defence system had been activated.

"Get down!" Jenny yelled, but it was too late. Bullets flew from the computer-controlled guns mounted in the walls, all aimed at the intruder. "No!" Jenny cried as he fell under the onslaught. "Sally, stop!"

The firing ceased. "What was that for?" She almost screamed. "I told you not to shoot!"

The computer's voice sounded very cool when it answered, though Jenny thought that was probably her imagination. "You said not to fire until we knew his intentions. He was armed and threatening. His intentions were obviously hostile."

"So he had a gun – he was defending himself! That's no reason to kill him!" Sally didn't reply and Jenny sighed heavily. The sooner she reprogrammed that thing, the better.

Slowly, she approached the body. Checking for vital signs – another ability instilled by the machine – told her that he was dead with no chance of resuscitation. A quick search revealed that the intruder had two guns, both of an old design. Late 2nd or early 3rd millennium, she guessed. There was also a device attached to his wrist which she unstrapped, curious. It still looked like old technology, if newer than the guns. "6th millennium, maybe?" She murmured. It would need further examination, she decided, pocketing it.

As she pushed herself to her feet, Jenny was surprised to find that tears were pricking at her eyes. It was slightly ridiculous, crying over a complete stranger, but he'd been killed on _her _ship, which made his death her responsibility, however accidental.

She was about to order Sally to open the airlock so she could get rid of the intruder's weapons – they were obsolete, nothing but space junk anyway – but before she did, the corpse of the intruder gasped loudly and began to sit up. Jenny screamed. The instincts to fight that had only so recently been suppressed kicked in again; before she could stop herself, she'd raised one of his guns and pulled trigger.

The intruder died. Again.

"Sally?" Jenny asked shakily. "Is...is this what you mean when you said he was terminated, but not dead?"

"Affirmative."

"Right," Jenny whispered, still in shock. "So, he can come back to life. And it's probably going to happen again."

"Affirmative."

Jenny nodded and knelt next to him again. Sure enough, mere seconds later, he gasped again. This time, while ready for it, she still raised the gun, thinking it might help with the image she was trying to present.

"Who are you?" Jenny demanded, as harshly as she could manage. "Who are you and what are you doing here?"

"Captain Jack Harkness," He answered, seeming unconcerned that his own gun had been turned against him. Then again, if he couldn't die, there really was no reason he should be. Actually, Jenny wondered what _would _concern him, if anything. "I'm not really here for a reason – completely accidental."

"Uh-huh. And what are you, exactly?"

He look confused. "Human?"

"Not according to the ship's computer."

"Ah. Yeah, well, I was human the last time I checked anyway." Captain Jack Harkness grinned suddenly and Jenny was quite sure that both her her hearts missed a beat. Only the strict military discipline that she'd been programmed with stopped that from showing on her face. "Of course, the last time I checked _was _over 2000 years ago. Which, now that I think about it, might've been the first clue - "

"So, you're _not _human, like the computer said," Jenny interrupted. "What are you then?"

He shrugged, still grinning. "One of a kind," He told her, with a wink.

"Ok, that's enough," Jenny said forcefully, cocking the gun with a click. "One, you are on my vessel without my permission, which makes you a trespasser. Two, as a trespasser, I am allowed to do whatever I want to you. Three...you aren't going to succeed in charming me, so you may as well stop trying." That was a lie if she'd ever told one. But that was something else he didn't need to know.

Captain Jack Harkness only smiled again. "One, I really am here by accident, so if I'm trespassing, it's not my fault. Two, you've already seen me come back to life at least twice – by now, you should've figured out you can't kill me. So what exactly _can _you do? And three...I have succeeded in charming more people – and non-people – than you can imagine. I haven't failed yet. Is there a particular reason we're counting?"

Ignoring the question, Jenny answered flatly, "_Yet_." Actually, she believed him. Unlike his ability to come back to life and his claim that he was there by accident, she found it very easy to believe he'd never failed in charming anyone.

"As to what I can do to you..." She added after a short pause. "Well, maybe I can't kill you, not for good, but from what I've seen, you do need time to recover from dying. A few minutes is all I'd need to restrain you. Then I could leave you on the next planet we come to. Or I could just drop you out right here. How would deep space work with your inability to die?"

For a brief moment, Jenny thought she saw a flicker of worry – perhaps even fear – cross his face. Then it was gone and he shook his head. "I don't think you'd do that."

"Oh? Why not? You don't know me."

"No," Jack said. "But I know you tried to warn me when the computer started shooting. And I've known enough people who'll torment and kill for the fun of it that I recognize them when I see them. And you're not one – it's something to do with the eyes."

Jenny just managed to stop herself from smiling. "You're right. I wouldn't," She said, a note of approval creeping into her voice. "But I was discussing things I _could _do, not the things I'm going to do, or even the things I'd be willing to do."

"So, what _are _you going to do?" Jack asked, sounding more curious than anything else.

The truth was that she had absolutely no idea what to do with him. "I'm going to...ask you some questions." She answered, hoping he didn't notice the brief hesitation.

"And those questions would be?" Jack prompted.

Before Jenny could reply, Sally the computer suddenly spoke. "Distress signal detected."

"'Distress signal detected'?" Jack repeated, sounding incredulous. "Why are you looking for distress signals?"

"That's...none of your business." Jenny snapped. "Now, come with me."

He followed, asking, "Where are we going?"

"The holding cells."

"What!" He quickly caught up with her. "Listen, you're searching for distress signals – you're...you're some kind of...intergalactic policewoman or something? I can help, I -"

Jenny looked at him sharply. "No!"

"Why not?"

"One, I work alone. Two, accident or not, you just _appeared _on my ship without my permission. I have no idea who you are. Three - " Jenny said.

"You're counting again." Jack pointed out.

Jenny glared at him. "_Three _- tell me, Captain Jack Harkness – if that's really your name – why, why in the universe should I trust _you_?"

**Author's Note: ****This is going to be more like a series of short episodic stories. There may or may not be an over-arching storyline. I haven't really decided. ****Right now, I have ideas for about 7 or 8 chapters. Whether they'll all come to fruition is yet to be determined.**

**Please review!**


	2. Jenny Meets Jack: Part 2

**Becoming a Time Lady**

**Disclaimer: I don't own Doctor Who or Torchwood, Jenny or Jack. It's very sad, I know. Especially the Jack part...**

**A/N: I use some random words to describe the technology of the future. It was kind of fun, thinking them up. I sort of give them definitions in the story, but just to clear things up: "Quantum tracked" means that the details of the technology are tiny, on a quantum level (protons, neutrons, electrons). In order to see something that's "quantum tracked", "quantum glasses" are necessary - I'd basically picture them as a pair of regular glasses (you ever notice that the 10th Doctor puts on glasses whenever he has to look at something closely? Well...). "Ion crystallic plating" doesn't have a really meaning - it's just something mechanical that Jenny knows is obsolete****. A "teleport plate" is sort of like a futuristic dumbwaiter - it allows objects to be sent and received by teleport.**

**Oh, and Cline is the first soldier they met on Messaline - the one Jenny kissed to get out of the cell. His name was given in the credits, but I'm not sure if it was ever said in the episode.**

_**Jenny Meets Jack: The Vortex Manipulator**_

The distress signal had come from a small planet called Henaphore, home of the Gowls. As it turned out, the computer had taken Jenny's instructions to search for all distress signals seriously; the cry for help had been nothing as dire as an invasion of the planet or a virus that threatened to destroy the Gowl race. In fact, it had come from a small group of explorers that had gotten lost in the Great Ice Cliffs of Henaphore. Jenny had given them a lift back to civilization, very probably saving their lives as they'd been freezing and starving when she found them. Despite this, it had hardly seemed a very impressive first solo adventure for her. And much too easy.

Now, back on her ship, Jenny was busy trying to discover more about her unexpected prisoner. Captain Jack Harkness. She still wasn't sure what was to be done about him, but she thought more information could only be useful in reaching a decision.

The spaceship, she was interested to discover, included more than living space for the colonists. Along with the holding cells where she'd left Jack, it also had a complete scientific laboratory, fully equipped for technical work, if she had any technical work to do. Which she did, at the moment.

"Sally?" Jenny asked, pulling the device she'd taken from Jack from her pocket. "What is this?"

Sally scanned the wristband quickly. "Information on device is unavailable."

Jenny sighed. "I should have known. Of course you wouldn't actually know something that's, you know, useful," she said slightly bitterly. She really did need to reprogram that computer, but there were more pressing – or at any rate, more interesting – matters at hand.

"Negative," Sally answered. "The information is known. The information is unavailable."

"Well, what's that mean?" Jenny asked. "Why is it unavailable?"

"Information is unavailable because you are unauthorized."

Jenny couldn't stop herself from laughing. "_Unauthorized?_" She repeated incredulously. "I'm not authorized to know about a piece of tech that seems to come from a thousand years ago?"

"Affirmative."

Jenny groaned softly. "I hate you," she informed the computer console.

When it didn't appear the computer was going to answer (and what could it say, after all, to that?) Jenny turned her attention back to the device.

Using tools that she found in the lab, specially designed for this kind of thing, Jenny opened the back of the device. Unsurprisingly, the mechanisms were quantum tracked, meaning much too small for her eyes to see, but that would be true for anything 4th millennium or later. In order to examine it, she used a pair of quantum glasses in the lab (again, meant for this exact purpose). "Aha!" She exclaimed after peering at it for a few minutes. "I thought so - ion crystallic plating. Ion crystallic plating has been obsolete since the 53rd century." She declared out loud. "This thing – whatever it is – is at least 800 years old. And his guns were closer to 4 _thousand _years old. Why?"

Another, more interesting question came to mind as she examined the wristband further. The tech that went into building it might've been used eight centuries before, but the device itself wasn't _nearly _that old. It was barely worn at all – granted, it was a durable piece of equipment, but nothing held up _this _well for _that _long.

"Sally, if you can't tell me what this is, can you at least tell me how old it is?" Jenny asked.

"Scanning..." Sally whirred. "The leather in the wristband is calculated to be 8 years old. The metal is calculated to be..." The computer whirred again. "2153 years old."

Jenny's eyes widened. The leather had been replaced not too long ago, obviously, but... "That doesn't make any sense – I thought it looked newer than it should be, not older! Humans didn't have this kind of tech 2000 years ago!" Though there was always the possibility it wasn't of human origin, she supposed.

Sighing, Jenny suddenly set the strange device aside and picked up one of Jack's guns instead. She was glad, now, that she hadn't had the chance to dispose of them like she'd originally planned.

"Alright Sally – I get that this weird wristband thing is top secret information for some reason. But there's nothing wrong with telling me about this gun, right?"

"Affirmative."

Jenny frowned when the computer didn't go on, then sighed in exasperation. "Tell me then! What kind of gun is it? What time period is it from?"

"Classification of weapon: Webley Mk IV revolver. It was used throughout the 20th century," Sally replied promptly and Jenny couldn't help feel a bit relieved – finally, a straight answer! Not one she really understood, unfortunately – the progenation machine had given her military knowledge, but it didn't extend all the way back to the 20th century.

"And how old is it? This particular gun, I mean."

"The revolver is 8 years old."

"Hmm..." She mused. "Same age as the leather, how interesting. Well...someone was feeling nostalgic, I guess."

"Clarify."

"To make this stuff so recently," She explained. "Perhaps Jack likes historical stuff, so he built an ancient gun design?" It still didn't make much sense to her. "And how he got a hold of metal that old..." Now that she thought about it, his clothes had been rather strange, too. Maybe it, too, was old-fashioned; just so old-fashioned that she hadn't -

"Negative." Sally broke into her thoughts.

"What? What now?" Jenny groaned.

"The revolver is made of metals used in the 20th century and put together using 20th century tools and technology."

Frowning, Jenny turned the gun over in her hands. "You mean, this isn't a replica. It was actually _made _in the 2nd millennium – it's _not _an ancient design that Jack found in some history book and decided to build 8 years ago."

"Affirmative."

"Well, what about this then?" Jenny said, picking up the wristband again.

"Information is unavailable."

"Of course it is." Jenny muttered in resignation.

Then, leaving both the gun and the wristband on the table in the lab, she stood and made her way to the holding cells where she'd left Jack only hours before. Whoever had designed the cells had not believed in providing prisoners with much in the line of comfort; they were little more than small rooms with a cot along one side and a teleport plate mounted on the wall – via which the computer automatically sent food several times a day. When Jenny arrived, she saw that Jack was ignoring them both, instead sitting on the floor, staring into space and looking decidedly bored. He glanced at her once and then looked away again as she sat down across from him on the cot. Jenny opened her mouth to say something, but Jack spoke first. "Successful?"

Taken aback, Jenny almost stuttered. "What?"

He he turned back to her, grinning. "The distress signal? Crisis averted?"

"Oh! Oh yeah. Yeah," Jenny said quickly, wishing she didn't sound so flustered – and wishing, furthermore, that her discomposure had been been caused by something other than his brilliant smile. "Crisis averted, yeah."

Jack nodded approvingly. "So, what was the problem?"

"Lost explorers in the Ice Cliffs of Henaphore - " She began, trying to remember what she'd actually come here to say.

"You're kidding!" Jack interrupted suddenly.

Jenny hesitated. "About what?"

"I've always wanted to see the Ice Cliffs of Henaphore. What were they like?"

"They were...beautiful," Jenny said slowly. "Very beautiful." She smiled a little at the memory of landing on the top of the ice, so clear that the planet's sun could shine straight through them. When the light hit one of the rare imperfections of the Cliffs, it would glow bright or else scatter into a rainbow of a thousand colours. "Um...I'm sorry you missed them." Jenny paused, then asked carefully, "So, do you like travelling?"

"Travelling? Sure, I like travelling."

"You are a traveller, then?" She prompted. "Would you consider yourself a traveller?"

"I suppose so, yes," He said, looking slightly confused.

"A time traveller?" She said it quickly, hoping to startle an answer – preferably a _true _answer – out of him.

To her own surprise, he wasn't startled at all. "Yep," he said with a smile. "I suppose it was pretty easy to figure out then, with the vortex manipulator."

Jenny opened her mouth in confusion, then closed it again. "Yes," She replied, trying to sound confident. "Yes, it really was. Very easy." She nodded firmly, successfully concealing her sudden rush of excitement. His mysterious device was a vortex manipulator! Fifty-third century tech, indeed! Technology now lost in time.

Vortex manipulators were nearly legendary pieces of technology that had been used by the equally legendary Time Agency that had been in operation around the turn of the 51st century. She knew little else from the progenation machine, because not much more was known by the general public – that would be why the computer couldn't answer her questions. It was no wonder she hadn't recognized it for what it was, because no one really knew except the Time Agents themselves and perhaps the people they worked with. It certainly wasn't knowledge that would be granted to every new colonist of Messaline.

Interesting that Jack assumed she'd know what it was – but no. When she thought about it, Jenny realized it made perfect sense. He didn't know who she was, after all – he'd called her an intergalactic policewoman. Someone that official might very well be expected to know how to recognize a vortex manipulator. And even if not, Jack would have immediately noticed she'd taken his device. When she then mentioned time travel, any suspicions that she would know what it was had been confirmed.

Because that's what vortex manipulators were supposedly able to do; travel through time. And Jack had as good as told her it was true. "You're a Time Agent then?" She asked carefully.

Jack shrugged. "Former. The Agency and I had a … disagreement a couple thousand years ago, so I went freelance."

_A couple thousand years? _Jenny wondered, but decided she'd come back to that. "You went freelance – and they just let you keep the vortex manipulator?"

"Well, I wouldn't exactly say 'let'..."

"So you stole it."

It hadn't been a question, not really, but Jack answered anyway. "No...I just never gave it back."

Jenny suppressed a smile and nodded. "You stole it," She repeated. Well, she'd stolen her own form of transport, hadn't she? She decided to change the subject. "How did you get here? You said it was an accident – well then, how so?"

"It was the vortex manipulator," Jack explained. "It hasn't worked for awhile and I was trying to fix it. Apparently I succeeded somewhat – it landed me here." He paused, glancing around. "Where is 'here', exactly? And when?"

"When is the year 6012. As to where, I'm not exactly certain. We left Henaphore – which you seem to be familiar with?" He nodded. "We left a few hours ago, but we could be anywhere now. No destination in particular, either."

Jack smiled. "You're an explorer, too, I take it."

"Sort of..." She trailed off, wondering what she was exactly. Did having the intention to explore make her an explorer, even if she hadn't done much in the line of exploration yet? "Anyway, next question," She said briskly. "Why can't you die?"

Grinning, Jack said, "I knew that question would come up. It always does, eventually. But I don't really understand it myself." Jenny crossed her arms and raised her eyebrows expectantly. "Ok, according to a friend of mine, I'm a fixed point in time and space – and I got that way because someone who had absorbed the time vortex brought me back to life."

"When was this?" It was an absentminded question as she tried to make sense of what he'd said. Although it felt strangely...right. As though if she'd known the words, she would've been able to tell without having to ask. Or if she found another 'fixed point in time and space' she'd be able to recognize it.

"About 2000 years ago. Two thousand, one hundred. Something like that." Jack was answering the question that she'd almost forgotten asking. Jenny nodded – now that she knew why he couldn't die, suddenly his age didn't seem so implausible.

"I only have one more question then," Jenny said. "Do you know what a TARDIS is?"

For the first time in the conversation, it seemed she had managed to surprise him. "_You _know what a TARDIS is?"

She paused, but decided to tell the truth. "No. I know the word, just not what it means." After another pause, she said, "So, what is it?"

"It's a time machine," Jack told her slowly. "It's an acronym, TARDIS. Stands for - " He cut himself off suddenly. "Why am I telling you this?"

Jenny didn't answer. She barely heard the question. Instead, she was frozen, staring into space with her mouth slightly open. "Time and Relative Dimension in Space," she whispered.

"What was that?"

Jenny forced her attention back to him. "Time and Relative Dimension in Space," she repeated, louder. "That's what 'TARDIS' stands for. It is, isn't it? But how do I know that?" She asked in confusion. The words had just come out – she'd known them as soon as Jack had said "time machine." But how?

After a few seconds of silence where Jenny pondered the origin of her knowledge and Jack stared at her, she sighed. "Thank you, that's all for now - " She said, starting to leave, but Jack stood up.

"Wait!" He called. Jenny stopped and looked back. "Your name. You never told me your name."

Jenny appraised him briefly. "No, I didn't." She turned to leave again, but this time, she stopped herself. "Actually, I do have another question. What _is _that you're wearing?"

Jack frowned. "How could you not know – it's a World War II uniform. I fought in World War II."

"World War II. Right." Jenny sighed. A 2000-year-old time traveller. Talking to him would take getting used to.

Back in the lab, five minutes later, Jenny forced herself to stop thinking about her strange acquisition of knowledge and Jack's immortality by focusing instead on his wristband. The vortex manipulator. She couldn't repress a shiver of excitement when remembering what it was she held.

"So _this _is a vortex manipulator," she murmured, putting on her quantum glasses again to examine it.

At first, not much made sense to her. It was a complex bit of tech – much more complex than anything the machine that given her information about. For a long time, she studied the device without really gaining anything from it whatsoever.

After about half an hour of no progress, Jenny decided to take a break. "What am I not getting here?" She muttered to herself, kicking at the table leg in frustration. Time travel tech wasn't something she was programmed to know about, but what about the basic mechanisms of the manipulator? They just didn't make any sense! There had to be something she was missing. Of course there was – anything could be hidden in that mess of -

At that point, Jenny froze in her kicking. "That's it!" She cried.

Anything could be part of such a complex device – anything. Maybe that meant the vortex manipulator wasn't _just _for time travel. Jack had already said it had brought him here – but he hadn't time travelled onto her ship, he'd teleported. Not just a time-travel device, a time-travelling _teleport _and perhaps more besides. If so, it was no wonder it was so complicated!

Her enthusiasm returned at full throttle, Jenny set to work again, this time looking for individual systems in the device, rather than trying to find a pattern in the whole. Piece by piece, she was able to figure out what more of the different parts were supposed to do – there was a teleport, as expected, several types of scanners, a comms system...there was little that this thing couldn't do.

_I want one of these_, she thought fervidly. For a moment, she considered just not giving this one back to Jack, as he'd never given it back to the Time Agency, but discarded the idea. She'd already stolen a mode of transport – she didn't _need _another one, she just wanted it. Maybe after this she'd be able to build her own vortex manipulator.

The teleport, as Jack had mentioned, was disabled, though she could see that he had tried to fix it, unsuccessfully. She wasn't surprised it had taken him somewhere random. She wondered whether she could get it working properly, but decided not to try just yet – she didn't want to accidentally teleport to another galaxy without a sure way of getting back; despite the annoying computer (which could and would be reprogrammed eventually) she did like this ship and would be hard pressed to find another like it.

Finally, there was only one thing left that she couldn't identify – presumably, the part that allowed for time travel.

Jenny sat back in her chair, setting the glasses aside again. There was no way she could figure that out without some rest first. She suddenly felt how tired she really was and said, "Sally? How long have I been working?"

"Six hours and 37 minutes."

She breathed a sigh of relief – she'd been worried it would be days, like it had been the last time she'd asked that question. And working on the vortex manipulator _had _felt sort of like the meditative state she'd used to unlock her progenation knowledge.

"I should go check on Jack," she said to herself. In truth, she could think of no real reason to go down there again – the computer would've taken care of anything he needed and she didn't have any more questions or have anything she particularly wanted to tell him. Nevertheless, she felt the urge to go see him again.

"Tell me," Jack said as she entered his cell again. He was now sitting on the cot – the floor, Jenny imagined had become quite uncomfortable over the past hours. "Is there anyone else on this ship?"

"No," Jenny answered as she sat down next to him. "Just you and me. Oh, and Sally," She added as an afterthought. "The computer," she said by way of explanation when he raised his eyebrows.

"Ah, yes. It's an interesting computer system you have; first it tries to kill me - well, it _does _kill me – then it gives me anything I ask for on the teleport plate."

"Yeah, that's the way it's programmed to work – destroy any threat, but help anything that isn't a threat. So long as you're in here, it won't consider you a threat." Jenny explained. "I didn't program it, by the way, it came that way."

"So, if I tried to attack you or something..."

"Then the computer would recognize you as a threat and – as it would say – procedures for your termination would be carried out."

Jack nodded, then looked thoughtful. "It identifies a threat as something that's a danger to any non-threat on the ship?" Jenny nodded. "And I'm a non-threat right now?"

"Yep."

"So," he continued. "What if you attacked me, unprovoked?"

Jenny blinked. "I hadn't thought about that." She let out a short laugh. "Considering how literal this computer is in following its procedures, I'd not be surprised if it tried to kill _me,_" she said. "I'll not try it, just in case, shall I?"

"Fine by me," Jack laughed. "Out of curiosity, what all would it consider an attack?"

"I dunno. What do you mean?"

"Would it, for example, consider this an attack?" Without warning, he suddenly bent down and kissed her, full on the mouth. She kissed back, unthinking. It was so different from the brief kiss she'd given Cline on Messaline - that had been a means to an end, but this! This was passionate and exhilarating. She didn't want to end it and when they finally broke apart, she was breathing heavily. "Guess not." She vaguely heard Jack say.

"What?" Jenny asked, having trouble focusing.

"The computer must not consider that an attack, since it didn't kill me," he explained. "Although maybe it would've if you'd responded like it was one." She nodded, slowly, still unable to think of anything other than the feel of his lips on hers. "Are you all right?"

"Yes...yes, I'm fine," she answered quickly. "It's just - that was - " _Amazing. _She finished in her head.

Jack was smiling again, and it was doing nothing for her concentration. "I thought you said I _wasn't _going to be able to charm you."

"Yeah, that was supposed to stop you from trying."

"I don't give up that easily."

"Well, it was worth a shot."

They were both silent for a few minutes while Jenny managed to compose herself again. Finally, Jack spoke again. "I still don't know your name."

"Jenny."

"Just Jenny?"

"Just Jenny."

"And who are you, Jenny?" He asked suddenly. "Where do you come from?"

There were so many answers to that question. She came from the progenation machine. She came from Messaline. She came from the Doctor - from the Time Lords. In the end, she didn't say any of that though. "It doesn't matter," she answered instead. "It doesn't matter where I'm from. What matters is where I'm going."

"And where are you going?"

"Everywhere. I'm going to see the universe." She suddenly smiled at him. "Wanna come with me?"

Jack didn't hesitate. "Yes."

Her smile broadened. "Well then. Welcome aboard, Captain Jack Harkness."

**Thanks for reading! Please review!**


	3. Blast in the Past: Prologue

**Becoming a Time Lady**

**Disclaimer: I don't own Torchwood or Doctor Who.**

_**Blast in the Past: Prologue**_

"You did _what_?"

Jenny laughed at the look of pure incredulity Jack was giving her. "H-how? That's not possible."

"Maybe I'm just smart," she said, proudly leaning back in her chair.

"Smart? If you did that, you're a fu-"

"Jack, language!" She cried quickly, cutting off the curse.

"A flipping genius, seriously! You'd have to be a genius."

She only laughed again. "I don't know. Maybe I am." She suddenly frowned in confusion. "'Flipping'?" She repeated, eyebrows raised.

"It's 21th century slang," he explained. "But really Jenny, it's not possible – you couldn't have..."

"But I did," she told him, eyes sparkling with excitement. "I told you; I'm just smart."

Jenny had, by herself, fixed the teleport on Jack's manipulator and wired it into her spaceship so that anywhere the manipulator teleported, the ship and its inhabitants would go too. Furthermore and more impressively, to herself at least, she had fixed it – something Jack had been trying to do, as far as she could gather, for about 8 years – in a grand total of three days. Wiring it into the ship (which was the "impossible" part) had taken 10 minutes flat.

"Genius, though..." Jenny continued. "I'm not so sure about that. Maybe if I fix the time travelling part – right now I can't make heads or tails of it. But that's just because I don't know anything about time travel. At least I know how a teleport _works_, but time travel...how does time travel even work?"

"It's complicated."

"Hey, I'm the one you called a genius!"

"True," Jack conceded. "But so you know, the fact that you can't fix it isn't _just_ because you don't know how it works. I understand it, and I still don't know what's wrong."

"Yeah, but you couldn't fix the teleport either," Jenny pointed out. "I assume you know how that works too."

Jack glared at her, but didn't comment. "Ok, time travel – at least, my kind of time travel – works by going through the Time Vortex."

After a moment of thought, Jenny nodded. "What's complicated about that?"

"Well, one, that's not all there is to it," Jack said slowly, as though he were trying to teach something to a small child.

Jenny huffed slightly. "First I'm a genius, now I'm a five-year-old," She muttered under her breath. No matter that she'd been "born" less than a week before. Jack didn't know that, and anyway, she'd stepped out of the machine with all the intelligence of an adult.

"Two," Jack went on, evidently not hearing her. "Do you even know what the Time Vortex is?"

"Now look who's counting?" Jenny interjected randomly.

Jack gave her a half-grin and continued, "Three - "

"Oh, and the answer is yes."

"To what?"

"I do know what the Time Vortex is," she said, nodding matter-of-factly. "It's the transdimensional spiral that connects all points in space and time. It was built by the Time Lords." She wondered vaguely whether being the daughter of a Time Lord had to do with why she had been able to give the definition so easily. It had just come to her, like the TARDIS definition a few days before. Had Time Lords built TARDISes as well? Yes, the random information generator in her head told her. Yes, they had.

She frowned, pondering this. The progenation machine had been built by humans and it had given her the knowledge of humans. But her father had been a Time Lord. Maybe the machine had taken the knowledge of Time Lords from his DNA? Did it work that way – could this sort of information be stored in DNA? The Doctor was the only one who could answer that question and she had no idea where to find him; he wouldn't even be looking for her, since he thought she was dead. If she kept spouting information about Time Lords though, she wasn't sure what other explanation there could be.

Without so much as glancing at Jack, who was still talking about the Time Vortex, Jenny reached over and pulled the vortex manipulator from where she'd mounted it in the front of the control room. The wires connecting to to the ship dragged behind. "I really should've made this connection wireless," she murmured. "Well, I suppose I still can.

"I assume," She said out loud, interrupting Jack's explanation of artron energy. "That the Time Vortex is the vortex to which the name 'vortex manipulator' is referring?"

"Yes," he answered. "Uh, what happened to understanding time travel before trying to fix the manipulator?"

"When was that ever mentioned? Besides, I do understand it." Jenny put on her quantum glasses once more, and began trying to work out the time travel part of the vortex manipulator. Now that she had the basic idea of how it worked, things were clicking.

One of the many functions of the vortex manipulator was generating a force field; a big power drainer, but it could withstand pretty much anything. However, one thing that had confused Jenny was that something that seemed to be another force field generator was a part of the time travel mechanism, only this one wasn't quite right. Now it made sense – it was for protection while in the Vortex. The other parts started fitting together in her head and soon she was able to find where the problem was. "The dilateral hatralic dimension analyser isn't quite connected to the helmic regulator, making the jump into the Time Vortex...not impossible, but difficult. And impossible to control."

"What do you mean not impossible? I haven't been able to use that for years," Jack said, completely failing, once again, to realize she'd just managed to figure out _his_ device in such a short time period.

"Jack, how did you get here?" She asked with a sigh.

"Teleport malfunction," he answered immediately.

"Mm-hmm," She said. "Where did you come from – or rather _when_ did you come from?" He frowned, but before he could answer, she went on. "You travelled in time just to get here, didn't you? It's not surprising," she added. "The vortex manipulator is designed to teleport and time travel at the same time. If you were trying to fix the teleport, it's possible you briefly fixed the time travel problem and were sent somewhere completely random in both space and time.

"Actually," She suddenly knitted her eyebrows and squinted at the manipulator again. "Not _completely _random. See, the safety release is still working fine, which is why you ended up here."

"The safety release?"

Jenny stared at him. "I thought you knew how this worked."

"I do. I just...I've never known what the safety release was for," He said, sounding uncomfortable. "Is it important?"

Smiling, Jenny replied, "Yes, quite important. It's what makes sure you don't teleport into the vacuum of space, or end up under three miles of rock, or materialize on top of someone by accident." It was her turn to take the tone of speaking to a little kid.

"Oh, by accident." Jack nodded. "So as long as teleporting into certain death – or eternity-long torture, in my case – as long as it was the plan, it's fine?"

Jenny rolled her eyes. "Erm...no." Then she frowned. "Torture?"

"Coming back to life isn't fun and I don't have any control over it. If I ended up in the vacuum of space, I'd keep dying and coming back to life over and over again. There probably wouldn't even be time in between to use the manipulator – assuming it was working properly – so I'd just stay there, forever, unless I was lucky enough to be picked up," Jack said, grimacing at the thought.

"I see..." Jenny suddenly remembered that he had, during their first meeting, briefly seemed scared of her – when she'd mentioned that exact course of action. This would be why. She quickly changed the subject. "Anyway, when the teleport malfunctioned, wherever it tried to send you was closer to my spaceship than to any other safe point – so the safety release locked onto the ship and brought you here."

"I thought you _didn't_ know how this worked."

"I didn't," Jenny said. "But now I do."

She began working on the broken connection as Jack just watched her. A few minutes later, Jenny spoke again, wanting to break the silence. "There was something I never figured out when I was examining the vortex manipulator, trying to find out who you were," she said. "The computer says it's 2000 years old."

"So? _I_ say _I'm_ 2000 years old, and you don't seem to have a problem with that," Jack pointed out. "I've had that thing most of my life is all."

"Yeah, but -"

Before she could finish, the ship gave an almighty lurch.

**A/N: I really only broke this off from the next two-shot story because it was taking so long to get to 'the lurch' at the end. Oh, yes, the cliffhanger ending. :) Exciting, is it not? You want to know what happens next, yes?**

**Yeah, me too. I'll probably update in...a week? No promises, no promises, I am making no guarantees here! I've got most of the next two chapters written, with a huge hole in the middle so I can't update 'til that's filled.**

**Please review!**


	4. Blast in the Past: Part 1

**Becoming a Time Lady**

**Disclaimer: To paraphrase the disclaimer thing at the end of movies, all (familiar) characters, events, and locations portrayed in this story are either fictitious or used in a fictitious manner and if the former, they are the property of their respective TV shows of Torchwood and Doctor Who. The story is based on my own ideas that stemmed from said TV shows. Any similarities to ideas that other people have had (stemming from the same source) are purely coincidental and unintentional. Also, no animals were harmed in the writing of this fanfic.**

_**Blast in the Past: Torchwood**_

As the ship rocked sideways, both Jack and Jenny scrambled to grab onto something, Jenny nearly falling out of her chair in the process. "What -!" Jack started, but it happened again, in the other direction. Then there was a shudder and Jenny got the strangest feeling in the pit of her stomach, a feeling that she couldn't seem to find a reason for.

"We're falling!" Jack cried, giving her said reason.

Jenny tried and failed to keep her response calm. "How can we be falling, we're in _space_!"

"Not any more – look," He pointed out the window and, sure enough, they were fast approaching the surface of a planet.

"Sally, what's happened?" Jenny said, quickly turned away from the approaching landmass. "What's going on?"

"The spaceship has been captured by the gravitational field of the planet - "

"Never mind what planet it is!" Jack interrupted. "Don't we have anti-grav?"

"Affirmative."

"And is there something wrong with it?"

"Negative."

Jack and Jenny glanced at each other, exchanging looks of confusion. "Then _why_ are we still falling?" Jenny questioned the computer harshly.

"The anti-gravity is not enabled." The computer replied.

Jenny gaped. "Well...enable it then! Right now!"

"Affirmative. Anti-gravity activating."

"Aren't there emergency protocols for this?" Jack asked.

"Guess not," Jenny muttered, thinking, _I really should've reprogrammed the computer when I had the chance._

To her immense relief, the ship's descent began to slow, but Jack was still looking out the window, and still seemed worried. "What's wrong?" Jenny asked warily.

"I think it's too late." He looked up, meeting her eyes seriously. "We were falling too fast and the anti-gravity won't be able to slow it down enough before we crash."

Jenny bit her lip. "Sally, I need a damage report. What happens when we hit the planet?"

"Impact with the planet will cause an explosion of level three. This will result in the deaths of six life-forms, including four human and two unknown."

Jack started. "Humans? What planet is -?"

"Doesn't matter," Jenny cut him off. "We have got to stop this ship or they are going to die, along with me!"

"Ok, yeah – how do you suggest doing that?"

Jenny opened her mouth, but nothing came out. Her mind was blank – there was no plan coming to her, no way that she could see to get out of this. "Uh..." Nothing. Why couldn't she think of anything? "I don't know!" She cried at last. "I haven't got any idea!"

Once it became clear that Jenny wasn't going to come up with a plan, Jack jumped into action. "All right. Jenny, are you emotionally attached to these?" He held up the wires that connected his vortex manipulator to the ship.

"Uh...no," she answered, confused.

"Good." He ripped them out of the device. "Take this," He said, strapping it around her wrist. "Teleport down the surface and find the humans the computer said were going to be killed. You know how to activate the force field?"

"Y-yes, yes of course I do," Jenny stuttered quickly.

"Ok, so find the humans, activate the force field around the five of you and...ride out the explosion." He finished.

"What about you?"

He shook his head. "The manipulator might not be able to handle teleporting two people and immediately afterwards making a force field. Don't want to risk it," he explained. "I'll stay here – I can survive anything."

Jenny nodded. "Goodbye, then," She whispered, and used the teleport.

Seconds later, she found herself on the ground, in what appeared to be a very large field. "Humans..." She muttered. "Where are the humans?"

"What humans?" A voice behind her spoke. Jenny spun around to find the four humans she was seeking standing there, only a few feet from her – all holding guns, which were all pointed at her. "And how did you get here?" The woman in front, who was evidently the leader, continued.

Instead of answering, Jenny ignored her and started pressing buttons on the vortex manipulator, expanding the range of the force field to include the others. "What are you doing?" The leader demanded.

"Saving your life," Jenny replied and hit the final button.

There was no visible change, but all present could feel a ripple through the air around them. "What was that?" One of the men asked, sounding wary.

"Force field," Jenny said.

Before she could elaborate, the spaceship hit – and not even she had seen it coming. The field absorbed or deflected anything that hit it, including sound, so Jenny and the four humans watched her ship first hit the ground, then explode, in complete silence. Jenny didn't know what had caused the explosion – could be anything, in a ship that size – and neither did she care. The computer had predicted this, but knowing that "a level three explosion" was going to happen and watching it happen all around her were two completely different things. Especially when the thing exploding was her own spaceship. Watching that nearly brought tears to her eyes.

The last of the debris had barely settled when the vortex manipulator gave a quiet beep and the force field died – again, a shiver in the air let the others know about this too. The leader of the group of humans spoke again, more quietly than before and Jenny was glad to see she'd lowered the gun. "Where did that come from?" She asked, voice forcibly calm and audibly so. "One minute the sky was clear, then suddenly a spaceship is blowing up around us – and I want you to tell me where it came from."

"Messaline," Jenny answered without thinking.

"What?"

"Messaline," she repeated. "The planet that the spaceship originally came from was called Messaline."

"All right," Again, the woman's tone was calm – but again, only barely so and it was obviously costing her effort to keep it that way. "But why didn't the ship show up on any of our scanners? Why couldn't we see it until it nearly killed us?"

Jenny opened her mouth, then closed it again. In truth, she had absolutely no idea why they couldn't see the ship as it fell. "It was shielded - invisible," she said finally; it had been her best guess. Though why the ship had been shielded against all forms of detection, including the naked eye, but _didn't_ have emergency protocols for crash landing that included turning on the anti-grav didn't make any sense to her. More and more, she was deciding that the people of Messaline had come from colonists who were a bunch of idiots.

The woman nodded slowly. "Was there anyone on board?" She asked.

Jenny hesitated. Jack would've survived the crash, of course, but if she told this woman there _had_ been someone else, she would expect them to be dead. If, on the other hand, she said that no one was there and then Jack decided to turn up, it might be a problem. "Yes," she said finally. "My...partner was in there. But he had a force field too. I only teleported down here because the computer said there were humans in the blast radius."

"So, you did come from the spaceship? And you came down here with the express purpose of saving us?" The leader clarified, sounding sceptical.

Jenny sighed. "Well, I didn't just come from the spaceship - it's _my_ spaceship," she said. "Which means if the crash landing had killed you or any one else, it would be my fault. Besides, saving people is what I do."

"How did you get here?" The second woman in the group asked suddenly. She was holding something that looked like a hand-held computer and glancing down at it every few seconds, frowning. "You just appeared out of thin air – how did you do that?"

"Teleport." Jenny held up her wrist to show them the vortex manipulator.

She was starting to notice something strange. While these people didn't seem to recognize teleports and force fields when they saw them, neither did they seem surprised that she was using them. Which didn't make any sense – if these were humans from a time before they had that kind of tech, then they shouldn't be so accepting of it. On the other hand, if they were from a time that _did_ have the tech, then why did they have to ask?

The second woman was now staring at the manipulator, "Is it just me, or does that look like -?"

Before she could finish, one of the men – the one who'd asked about the force field – interrupted. "You sure your partner had a force field?" He called from a little ways away. Evidently, he'd been exploring the wreckage while Jenny had been talking.

"Yes, quite sure. Why?" She called back.

"Because that," He said, indicating a piece of her ship that appeared to be a broken control panel. "That looks an awful lot like blood."

"Ah..." Now that he'd pointed it out, she could see the red on the panel. It _was_ Jack's blood no doubt - immortality didn't stop him from bleeding. Jenny frantically tried to come up with something to say. "Maybe I was...wrong?"

Neither he nor any of the others looked very impressed by this answer. "Your partner might be dead, but you don't seem too concerned about it," the leader of the team – for a team it was, quite obviously – said, eyes narrowed in suspicion. She seemed to be on the point of pulling out her gun once more. "Who are you?" She asked suddenly.

"My name is Jenny. Just Jenny," she answered. "I come from Messaline." After a moment of hesitation while she glanced around at what had once been a field and had now been destroyed by the crash. "Sorry about this," she added. "Complete accident. I'm not sure what went wrong, but I'll figure it out. Still, there's not much control in a crash landing, so be glad we didn't hit a populated area."

The team stared at her while she continued to ramble. She was trying to buy time, waiting until Jack came back to life. It hadn't taken this long the last time – but then it probably _would_ take longer get over being blown up than it did for being shot, even for him.

"Are you all right?' The leader suddenly broke in.

"What? What do you mean, why shouldn't I be all right?" Jenny asked, speaking very quickly.

"Well, you keep looking round," she answered. "Like you're waiting for something. Something that should've happened by now, but for some reason it hasn't."

Jenny herself hadn't noticed it, but the woman was right – her eyes were darting around the wreckage constantly, searching for...searching for Jack, if she were to be honest with herself.

"You want to know what I'm waiting for?" _Why hasn't he come out yet? _"My partner – I'm waiting for him." _Is it really supposed to take this long?_ "You asked if I was all right and I wanted to know why I shouldn't be, but the truth is," _Oh, where _is _he?_ "I want to know why I _should_ be all right.

"My spaceship is gone, I'm now stuck on a planet that I've never seen before – and now, you tell me that my partner might have been killed in the crash." To her surprise, she felt tears pricking at her eyes. It wasn't because she actually thought Jack had died for good this time – it was the very thought of that happening, possible or not, that made her want to cry. "So why _should_ I be all right, right now? Would you be, if it were you?"

They were all quiet for a while after this speech. Jenny thought she heard one of them mutter, "I know _I_ wouldn't be..." but otherwise, for the next few minutes everything was silent.

"Well, this is a chatty group, isn't it?" Jack's voice said suddenly from behind Jenny. As one, the humans' eyes raised to look over her head. Jenny glanced back, smiling, to see that Jack was standing on top one of the few parts of her spaceship that remained intact, hands on his hips. The effect was rather dramatic – which, Jenny decided, was probably the point. "Although," he continued, jumping to the ground, "There aren't any guns out, which is always a good sign."

"Jack?" The leader whispered and Jenny's smile vanished. She turned back to the group to see that the leader and the two men were looking shocked, while the second woman was nodding and looking just a little bit proud of herself.

"You know him?" Jenny asked them, incredulously.

"_He's_ your partner?" The leader shot back, in the same tone.

"Yes," Jack said, "Yes to both questions."

"So, you know them?" This time Jenny directed her question at him.

"Yeah, old friends of mine." He quickly introduced them as Gwen Cooper, Owen Harper, Toshiko Sato, and Ianto Jones. "Now I have a question for you, Jenny," he continued. "How did we get here?"

Jenny blinked. "Accident?" She suggested.

Jack didn't seem convinced. He shook his head, but as he was about to speak, Gwen broke in, "Where have you been, Jack?"

He hesitated. "How long have I been gone for?" He asked carefully. Jenny frowned. There was something in his tone that she couldn't quite place. Was it pain? If so, then why?

"Two weeks," Gwen answered quietly. Dangerously, Jenny thought. "Where. Have. You. Been?"

Jack didn't answer her, just sighed heavily. "Gwen..."

"Jack..." She replied, almost warningly.

"I think we should go back to the Hub," he said.

"Actually," the man Jack had introduced as Owen interrupted. "That might be a problem. The Range Rover was in the blast radius and outside the force field. And we're about an hour's drive outside of Cardiff. How are we supposed to get there?"

"I can call a taxi," the second man, Ianto, suggested. He held up what Jenny had to assume was some sort of communicator from this time period. She wondered what time period it was – and what a Range Rover was and what "the Hub" was, but decided that it wasn't the right time to ask. "My question is, what do we do with all this?" Ianto added, gesturing to the wreckage around them. "We can't let anyone else see it."

This time, Jenny couldn't keep her curiosity to herself. "Why not? Hasn't anyone ever crashed here before?"

"Well, they have, sure, but - " Owen began, but Jack cut him off.

"Sorry, Jen," he said quickly. "I suppose you still don't know where and when this is." Jenny shook her head. "Earth, early 21th century. Post-first contact, just barely, but pre-mass acceptance of alien life. So, yes, there have been alien encounters here before, but the general public isn't ready to believe it yet."

"Until they are, they'll think it's an alien invasion," Gwen explained. "A crash like this would cause panic around the world – which we really don't need."

"To be fair," the woman Jack had named Toshiko pointed out. "The last time an alien spaceship 'crash landed' on Earth, it really _was_ an alien invasion."

"Back on the topic of how to cover up _this_ crash?" Gwen said. As far as Jenny could tell, the explosion had had a blast radius of about half a mile. Not easily concealable, by any means. Well, not by 21st century means, anyway.

"Hang on a second," Jenny said then picked her way over to the control panel Owen had found, hoping it was still intact enough for what she had in mind. "The invisibility shield was disabled when the ship hit the ground, but I think...yes!" She reconnected a broken wire and the ship became invisible once more, leaving the illusion that the one-time field was now just a large patch of dirt. "It's still tangible, so we'll have to be careful leaving, but – what?" She suddenly realized that everyone else was staring at her, though Jack was grinning.

"How did you do that?" Owen wanted to know. "The ship was destroyed."

"Yes, but the shield was entangled throughout the ship. Since I was able to activate it on one part, it works on all of it," Jenny explained.

"Uh, ok..."

"Good," Ianto said, breaking the slightly awkward silence that followed. "I'll just call the taxi then."

As Ianto made the call, Jenny approached the woman with the hand-held computer. "Toshiko, wasn't it?" She asked.

"Tosh, yeah," she answered, smiling.

"The others seemed shocked to see Jack, but you weren't surprised at all. Why not?"

"Good point," Jack said, coming up to them. "Why weren't you surprised?"

"Well, I'd already half-guessed it was you," she said to him. "I thought it was pretty obvious, actually." She looked around at the others, but none of them seemed to agree with this statement. "We picked up this signal – something we'd never heard before – and tracked it here. Turns out it was her...teleportation device. A device which, if I'm not mistaken, is actually Jack's." Again, the response from her team members was mostly blank stares. "I realize the rest of you didn't know where the signal was coming from, but surely you at least recognize the wristband?"

"Now that you mention it, yeah," Gwen told her. "But we weren't really paying attention to that sort of thing. Besides, that isn't a reason to assume her partner was Jack."

"No, perhaps not," Tosh continued."But when you add it to the fact that Jenny here didn't seem very concerned when we thought her partner had died in the crash. Some friend she is – unless, of course, her partner can't die and she knows it." Tosh stopped suddenly. "You _do_ know about that?"

"Of course," Jenny answered. "Or else I promise, I would've been more concerned."

"How you learn about it?" Gwen asked, sounding curious.

"Well, actually, I - "

"She killed me," Jack finished for her. "First time we met."

"Reflex..." Jenny muttered. "Sorry."

The reached 'the Hub' about two hours later. As it turned out, the Hub was just what they called their headquarters, located underneath a city.

"Welcome to Torchwood, Jenny," Jack said as they entered.

Jenny couldn't help feeling a bit impressed as she looked around the large room, full of technology that must've come from all over the universe. "A pterodactyl?" She muttered, watching the dinosaur that was supposed to be long extinct flapping high above them. "So, what is Torchwood, exactly?"

"We monitor and control alien activity, mostly in the Cardiff area." Gwen answered.

"Cardiff?"

"That's this city, where we're based," she replied quickly. "Aliens and alien tech are more likely to end up here than elsewhere because there's something called a rift running through the city – a rift in space and time. That means that - "

"Yes, I know what a spatial-temporal rift is," Jenny broke into the explanation. "It lets things from different places and times appear here. I assume that's where the pterodactyl came from."

"Yeah..." Gwen said, glancing at Jack, who laughed.

"Gwen, you're going to be hard pressed to find anything she doesn't understand or can't figure out, she's a genius," he told her.

Genius? Jenny still wasn't sure about that. Back on the ship, as they were falling, she hadn't been able to think at all – what good was intelligence, or even genius, if it was going to desert her as soon as it mattered most?

Jenny's eyes filled with tears. She had been absolutely useless. Saving the explorers on Henaphore, helping the Doctor on Messaline – neither meant a thing any more She'd never felt in danger, not really, either time. And the Doctor had always been so in control on Messaline that she couldn't help but know he'd win. The tears spilled out, pouring down her cheeks

How could she have thought she could manage the same alone?

"Jenny?" Reflexively, Jenny turned her head away from Jack's voice and tried to hide the tears, covering her face with her hands. "Oh, Jenny..." With her eyes covered, she didn't see his approach, only felt it as his arms wrapped around her. She stiffened slightly in surprise, but then relaxed against him. She wasn't sure why she was so at ease with Jack – it was just something about him that made her want to accept the comforting hug.

After a few seconds, while Jenny cried in earnest, face pressed to Jack's army coat, he spoke. "Jenny, listen to me. It'll be fine -"

"No!" She cried, trying to push away, but he didn't let go. "It's not! I acted like an idiot back there! I couldn't do anything!"

"You save their lives, Jenny, and your own. What more could you do?"

"Yes, but on _your_ instructions! I couldn't think – I had no idea what to do!" She choked, tears flowing harder still. "I can't do this, maybe...maybe I should just quit!"

He was silent for a while, stroking her hair gently. "Jenny...how long _have_ you been doing it? Travelling and answering distress signals, I mean?"

Jenny had hoped that question wouldn't come up, but now that it had, she knew she had to answer it. She took a deep breath. "When I met you, the signal from Henaphore? That my first. The first distress signal I ever answered."

"Well, there you go then!" He said, and she thought he actually sounded relieved. "Jenny, you can't get upset about this – and you can't give up so early. All you need is a little experience – thinking under pressure is hard at first, but you'll get used to it. But you can only do that if you keep trying."

"But – but you were so calm, and I - "

"Jenny!" Jack interrupted. "I've been doing this for...so long, Jen. Most of my life, and I've lived a long time. Lately, I've been on my own, but before that I was working here, at Torchwood. I started at the Time Agency as a kid. I've travelled with the Doctor and - " He cut himself off suddenly. "Are you alright?"

He'd felt her jerk at the mention of the Doctor, she supposed. "You know him too? The Doctor, you know the _Doctor_?"

**A/N: I should probably explain the strange Disclaimer at the top:**

**Pretty much every Torchwood/Doctor Who crossover that involves Jack and Jenny have Jenny crash land in or around Cardiff. Yes, I know this. But I promise you that the idea for it came to me _before_I knew it – I thought it up all by myself and the events in this chapter came from my own head. You see, I've looked up the crossovers that name Jack and Jenny as their main characters and I've read the summaries – but I haven't read the stories. That's the way I work with fanfiction – if I have an idea, but realize that other people have had and written the same idea before me, I make sure not to read what they did with it before trying myself. That way I can't accidentally steal something from them, see? Because I can't have that.**

**Anyway, please review!**


	5. Blast in the Past: Part 2

**Becoming a Time Lady**

**Disclaimer: I don't own Torchwood or Doctor Who.**

_**Blast in the Past: Two Hearts**_

"I spent a few months travelling around the universe with the Doctor." Jack said. "How do _you_ know him?"

Jenny hesitated. She wasn't sure she wanted to tell him just yet – it wasn't that she minded talking about the Doctor, she had nothing wrong with that. But if she did, then she might have to mention that she was less a week old. How do you tell a 2000 year old man that he'd kissed a 6 day old girl?

To avoid answering immediately, she cast her gaze around the Torchwood Hub and her eyes landed on a piece of machinery that looked vaguely recognizable. "That a Medi scanner?" She asked, motioning to it.

Jack looking where she was indicating and nodded. "Yes. But the Doctor -"

"I'll get to him." She crossed the room and came to a halt next to the Medi scanner. "Bit old-fashioned," she muttered. "Though ahead of its time, here." Still, it wasn't complicated, and Jenny was easily able to set it to show the cardiovascular system. Then she put her hand on the scanner.

Jenny watched, almost proudly, as Jack saw the result and his jaw dropped. "Two hearts," he whispered.

"Two hearts," Jenny agreed, nodding.

"But how can she have two hearts?" Owen protested, coming up behind them. Gwen and Tosh followed him, both looking intrigued. "How does that even work?"

"Binary vascular system – they aren't all that uncommon on the other side of the galaxy," Jack told him absently, still staring at the screen. Then he turned to Jenny. "I knew it."

"Really? How?"

"Not about the hearts, but I knew you weren't human, anyway. The computer – when we were falling, it said that crash would kill four humans and two unknown life-forms. Since I know Gwen, Owen, Tosh and Ianto to all be human and according to your computer -" He gave a quiet snort at this point. "- _I _am an unknown life-form, that leaves only you as the other unknown."

"Very good," Jenny said, grinning. "I hadn't thought you noticed."

"So, what are you then?" Gwen wondered. "An alien?"

"I'd be an alien even if I were human," Jenny told her. "I was born on another planet – isn't that what being an alien means? But as to what kind...I think Jack should know that by now."

He nodded. "Aliens with binary vascular systems aren't usually humanoid – most aren't even _close_ to being humanoid. But there's one I know that _is_ and considering what we were just talking about..." He trailed off. "Wait! You're not -! No, no you couldn't be."

"What?"

"The Doctor. You're not the Doctor, are you?"

Jenny stifled a giggle. Her, the Doctor? "I am not the Doctor." She said, still struggling for a straight face.

"No, that wouldn't really make any sense, would it?" He answered quickly and she shook her head. There'd been plenty of clues to say she wasn't the Doctor; she hadn't recognized Jack, for one thing – and the Doctor would've, assuming Jack was telling the truth about travelling with him. She'd been unable to think in a crisis and there was also her lack of a TARDIS...

Jenny frowned at the unbidden thought. Did the Doctor have a TARDIS then? That had to be what it meant. And presumably, Jack would know that. Actually, that was probably why he'd known what a TARDIS was in the first place.

One thing that didn't even cross her mind at the time was that if Jack knew the Doctor, then he should be able to recognize him – and know that Jenny wasn't he. Even once she did think of it, much later, she couldn't seem to convince herself that it was a valid point, but she couldn't figure out why not.

"But if you're not the Doctor," Jack added. "Then you can't be a Time Lord."

"No, I'm a Time Lady!" Jenny corrected. She remember her father had never answered Donna's question about what a female Time Lord was called, but it didn't matter – like the other information having to do with Time Lords, the word for her gender came with ease. She remembered, also, that the Doctor had denied that was what she really was. Called her "an echo" instead. Did that mean -?

Before the implications of her father's description were able to surface, Jack broke in. "You can't be – the Doctor's the only one left in the universe!"

Jenny took a deep breath. When he was talking about the Time Lords, the Doctor had said that it was all gone now. She hadn't thought about what that really meant. The only Time Lord left? In the entire universe? She couldn't see how that could be possible. And yet, the words rang true. More than that, as she heard them, images flickered through her mind, vague images of fire and destruction. She forced herself to stop thinking about that, focusing instead on Jack once more.

"Who are you, then, Jenny?" he asked.

"I'm the Doctor's daughter."

His reaction was rather predictable. "You...you're _what_?"

"I'm the Doctor's daughter," she repeated, smiling. "I really am – you can see the hearts."

"I know, but...but the Doctor doesn't have a daughter," he protested. "Well – who's your mother?"

"That's the thing, Jack. I haven't got one." Jenny answered, speaking uncertainly. How to explain this? She let out a short, nervous laugh, then took a deep breath. "I'm a child of a progenation machine."

"And a progenation machine would be?" Tosh prompted.

"Well, the way my dad explained it..." She trailed off, frowning. "Actually, maybe the way the Doctor explained it isn't the best way to go – it was kind of technical and unnecessarily so. A progenation machine takes DNA from one person and uses it to grow another one."

"So, like cloning?" Owen guessed.

"Eh-hh..." Jenny shrugged a little, unsure. "Not exactly. The idea is similar, but cloning copies the DNA in its entirety. With progenation, there's randomization involved. The Doctor's DNA is similar to mine – as similar as father to daughter – but not exact, like it would be for a clone or an identical twin. One parent acts, biologically, as both mother and father to a child that has a brand new genetic code," she finished, hoping her speech had made sense. To her relief, the others were nodding in understanding.

"So, _why_ did the Doctor use a progenation machine?" Jack wanted to know.

"Oh-oh, well," Jenny stammered. "Actually, it was because they held him at gunpoint and forced him to."

To her surprise, Jack laughed, and not to her surprise, the others all looked horrified. "Typical!" Was all Jack had to say.

"Exactly what sort of planet do you come from?" Gwen cried. "That they coerce people into having children by some...machine?"

"Sounds like rape to me." Owen added and Gwen nodded.

"Hmm...Dad said it wasn't natural parenting, but I don't think he thought of it like that," Jenny said thoughtfully. "And _I_ never did. To answer your question," she added to Gwen. "I come from a planet at war. Messaline, it's called."

"And let me guess – Messaline wasn't at war any more when the Doctor left?" Jack asked.

"Nope," She couldn't help grinning. "It had recently been colonized by humans and these...well, you'd call them aliens, but they live on the planet I come from, so I can hardly say that. These creatures called the Hath.

"Right after they arrived, the humans and Hath were divided and went to war. When the Doctor showed up, they'd only been fighting a week, but all the original colonists were dead, leaving only the children of the machine behind. They were fighting without really knowing or even wondering why. All either side knew was that they wouldn't give up until they won – and winning meant killing everyone on the other side."

"Ooh, genocide." Jack commented. "The Doctor doesn't like genocide," he added for the benefit of the others.

"Exactly," Jenny agreed. "So he stopped them. I'd go into how, but it's a pretty long story."

Gwen seemed to be all for listening to it right then, but Jack spoke first. "Maybe later. I'm more interested in how the colonists managed to be completely replaced by the...'children of the machine'...in one week." Jenny sighed, knowing the question she'd been dreading was about to be asked. "How long does it take the progenation machine to grew someone to maturity?"

"About, oh, ten seconds." She shrugged, trying to seem nonchalant. "Dad reckoned they went through about twenty generations in a day, but that was less the rate of progenation and more the rate that people were dying in the war. And we come out as adults, too, so no time period needed to grow up. I've been like this all my life."

"And, how old are you?"

Jenny took a deep breath, then said, "Six."

"You're six years old?"

She sighed. "No, Jack. I'm six _days_ old." After a long pause during which she realized Jack wasn't about to answer, she decided to try breaking the tension. "You're not the person in the universe who's allowed to not look their age."

To her relief, he laughed. "I suppose you're right. Six days, though...it's just unexpected."

While they'd been talking, Ianto had been working at one of the many computers around the room. He had now, evidently, finished whatever he'd been doing and came up to them. "I've been running some tests on the satellite images of the crash site," he said. "Though Jenny made the spaceship invisible to the naked eye, the shields for other forms of cloaking are still inactive."

"I know," Jenny said. "I couldn't get the others working."

"It means that the ship can still be found, easily if you're looking for it," he continued. "And it's possible that someone noticed the explosion, so we can't assume no one will be looking."

"So, we still have to get rid of the space ship somehow," Gwen said with a sigh. "Invisibility was only a temporary solution."

"We can always incinerate it," Owen suggested.

Jenny shuddered involuntarily. "Absolutely not!" She cried. "You do realize that's _my_ ship you're talking about?"

"Well, we have to do something with it," Tosh told her, looking slightly confused about the outburst. "Even if no one's actually looking, it's only a matter of time before someone finds it, if only by tripping over something – and it's not as if it's any use to you any more."

"I can fix it!"

That shocked them all. "Jen, there's nothing to fix," Jack said cautiously. "You saw the wreck?"

"Yes, I saw it," She answered grimly. "And granted, there's not much left, so no, I can't fix it completely – especially not in this time, with this tech. Rebuild. Perhaps that's a better word. I can rebuild it into something more practical. That ship was pretty big for two people anyway."

"Two?" Ianto asked.

"Two, yeah," Jenny nodded and watched as the Torchwood team realized the implied meaning in the words and they all looked from her to Jack. "Yes, Jack is still my partner, you know." She added, for extra clarification. No one said anything. Gwen was staring at Jack, shaking her head slightly, as though trying to deny the statement.

"Anyway," Jenny continued. "Give me three months and I'll have turned the pieces of my spaceship into something much better. I promise."

"Six weeks," Jack said.

"What?"

"You can't have three months. Take six weeks."

"_Why_?" This time, Jenny's question was echoed by the others. "I can do it, I suppose, but why?"

He hesitated. "Can I talk to you in my office, Jenny?" There were several exclamations of frustration from the others, but Jenny just nodded, slightly confused. Jack then gave orders for the parts of the ship that were salvageable to be brought to the Hub and the rest of the team left, still looking annoyed. Jenny couldn't really blame them – it was obvious they were desperate for answers and didn't like it that he was willing to tell her, Jenny, but not them.

"Well?" Jenny asked, raising her eyebrows, as she and Jack reached his office,

"I am not who they think I am – and in three months, the Jack _they _know will come back," He told her cryptically.

"I don't understand."

"Never thought I'd hear you say _that._" He laughed and Jenny couldn't help joining in. "It has to do with time travel. For most people, personal time lines are straight lines. But not time travellers, obviously." Jenny nodded, almost impatiently. "The first thing they teach you at the Time Agency is to _never _cross your own time line. I'm not very good at it, actually, but I try. Over the course of the 20th century, there are at least two, occasionally three versions of me on Earth at any given time – they never meet, though, I do make sure of that."

Nodding slowly as she tried to process what he was saying, Jenny said, "So...you're on a different part of your time line than they think you are. Farther on. And in three months you'll come back, if you're still here, you'll cross your own time line." Somehow, that sentence made perfect sense to her, though she was sure it wouldn't to most people. "Which means we have to leave before then."

"Exactly," Jack said, smiling at her. "Knew you'd get it."

Jenny smiled back. "Well, I _am_ a Time Lady," _Or, an echo of a Time Lady, _she added to herself. She still wasn't sure what that meant and resolved to try and figure it out later. "Guess understanding things to do with time travel is in my blood, right?" She decided. Then her smile faded. "They don't want you to leave, you know. Torchwood. Do you want to stay?"

"It doesn't matter," He shook his head. "We don't have a choice, so it doesn't make any difference - "

"Jack!" She interrupted. "It _does_ make a difference. How you feel makes a difference, whether it changes your actions or not. It matters. So do you want to stay or don't you?"

For a few seconds, she wasn't sure he was going to answer. Finally, he said, "Yes. I do want to stay." Jenny sighed, though she hadn't expected any other answer. "Since I left home, oh, _so_ long ago, this is the only place I've really felt like I belonged. And the team – I've missed them."

After a few seconds of silence, Jenny asked, "Why did you leave, then?"

"The Doctor showed up," he answered simply. "I just wanted to see him again, but things escalated – as they always tend to do, with him – and I ended up not coming back for awhile."

"Not that. The second time you left. Since you came back three months after leaving the first time, you must've left again," she explained. "In order to meet me, I mean."

"How do you know? Maybe I accidentally teleported from here," Jack suggested.

"No," She shook her head firmly. "I know, because you accidentally teleported while trying to fix it. You couldn't fix it here – I doubt you even tried. It would be like trying to fix...uh, what was the communication device that Ianto used to call a taxi?"

"A cell phone?"

"Cell phone, yes. It would be like trying to fix a cell phone with a sledge hammer," Jenny finished. "The point is, you weren't fixing it from here – which means you left again. But why?" After a few seconds, she thought to add. "If you don't mind me asking."

"No..." He answered, but it still took him awhile to say anything more. When he did, she understood why. "They died," he almost whispered, eyes closed. "Owen and Tosh. Ianto. They've all died in my time line. Owen and Tosh about a year from now, Ianto not long afterwards."

"Gwen?"

Jack s hook his head. "No, she was fine," he said. "Can we talk about something else?"

"Yeah, of course, sorry," Jenny nodded and cast her thoughts around for a different subject. "You said there are two versions of you at any given time during the 20th century? How does that work?"

"I've lived through it twice – the first time was because I tried to use the vortex manipulator to jump from the year 200100 to the 21st century. Except I missed and landed in 1869 instead. That's what burned out the manipulator in the first place," he told her, obviously more comfortable with this subject.

"It wasn't burned out when I fixed it," Jenny said. "Actually, I'd say it was deliberately disabled."

"I said 'in the first place', didn't I?" Jack protested. "Anyway, I didn't have any way of leaving, so I just stayed here until 2008 – which is about a year in the future of this time – when I was...kidnapped..." A pained expression crossed his face as he said this, and Jenny decided that this time she would refrain from asking why when he obviously didn't want to talk about it. "And taken to the year 27 A.D. to be buried alive for almost two thousand years. Though actually, I was found by Torchwood during the mid-1900s and convinced them to freeze me instead, so at the moment, that version of me is actually in the vaults here. But he won't wake up for awhile, so we're ok."

"Wait," Jenny gasped, suddenly understanding something. "When they buried you, you had the vortex manipulator?"

"Yeah..."

Jenny nodded, relieved that one mystery had finally been solved. The metal in the manipulator wouldn't stop getting older while underground, but if nothing else had happened to it for so long, it was no wonder that it didn't actually _look_ that ancient. "All right, good. So those two versions were there for the entire twentieth century and into the twenty-first. And in the twenty-first century, you weren't in Cardiff for a total of three months – these three months," She mused. "Which is rather coincidental, isn't it?"

"Yes, it is. Not only did we end up on Earth, of all planets, and not only in the early 21st century, but in this particular time period. Very coincidental," Jack agreed. "Too coincidental actually – there's got to be a reason for it."

"Exactly," Jenny said, frowning in thought. She flipped open the vortex manipulator that was still on her wrist and pressed the buttons that would ready it for time travel. To her surprise, a series of numbers came up on the screen without prompting. "Now that's strange..." She muttered.

"What is?"

"Did you ever use the manipulator successfully after it burned out in 1869?" Jenny wanted to know.

"Yeah, the Doctor fixed it," he replied. "We used it to get back from the end of the universe."

Jenny arched an eyebrow at the last words. "The end of the universe? That the end in time or space?"

"Time."

"Interesting," she said. "Anyway, let me guess...the last time you used it was to go to the date...23rd of June, 2007?"

He seemed taken aback. "I don't remember the exact date, but it was something like that, yeah. How did you know that?"

Jenny unstrapped the vortex manipulator and tossed it to him. "The coordinates of the last successful trip it made were locked into it's memory, see? So, when I was trying to fix the time travel mechanism, it must have activated and brought us to the last place it was used."

Jack seemed unconvinced. "This isn't the last placed we used it, though. The last place – for real, anyway - was at...58.2 N 10.02 E," he said, reading the numbers off the manipulator. Jenny couldn't help wondering why he'd interjected the "for real" part. Could you _feign_ using a vortex manipulator or something? She didn't think so. "That's off the coast of Norway, which isn't all that near to Cardiff. Besides, today is July 8th, not June 23rd. We're a couple weeks and about two thousand miles off."

"Two weeks and two thousand miles," Jenny repeated flatly. "Forgive me if I don't think that's all that far, considering we travelled four _millennia_ and a few thousand _light-years_ to even get here. It's allowed a little leeway."

"True," Jack conceded. "Besides, it's always possible that the rift affected it somehow – drawing us off course. I can ask Tosh if there was any rift activity where and when we came through, once she comes back, if you want."

Jenny nodded, then asked, "Are you going to tell them?"

"Tell them what – that I've seen them die in the future?" He asked.

"Well, maybe not _that_," Jenny said. "Who wants to know that? But just about your being from their future, I mean."

"I don't know. Haven't decided. What do you think? Should I?" He wondered.

Jenny answered slowly, pondering carefully. "I'm not sure the question is whether or not you should. I think the question is whether or not you _did. _Back when you were the one just coming back after three months, was there a future version of you who had turned up in the interim who wondered the same thing? And if so, what did _he_ do?"

"How am I supposed to know that?"

"_I_ dunno," she said. "He's you, not me. Just think about it and I'm guessing you'll probably figure it out. That's your job over the next six weeks, while mine is rebuilding a spaceship."

**A/N: Well, the 'Blast in the Past' story was _supposed_ to be two chapters (and a prologue). That didn't work out very well. I don't know how long it will take them to actually leave, so the next chapter could be any length whatsoever. Haven't even started it yet. But, it's been a week since I last posted, so...**

**Oh, and the 'Medi Scanner' is supposed to be the thing that Gwen used to find out she was pregnant in Children of the Earth. I don't know if they actually had it in this time period, but there's nothing to say they didn't.**

**Anyway, please review!**


	6. Blast in the Past: Part 3

**Becoming a Time Lady**

**Disclaimer: I do not own Doctor Who or Torchwood.**

_**Blast in the Past: Imitations**_

**Jenny's POV:**

Jenny's "job", as she had labelled it, turned out to be much easier than she expected. Not only did Torchwood happen to have a large, empty room in their basement for her to work in ("It's for alien stuff," Owen told her. "We've got three more already jam-packed with junk. This one will be filled eventually."), but she also had plenty of parts to work _with. _While the crash and subsequent explosion had _looked _impressive – impressively destructive, anyway – and most of the hull of the ship had been destroyed in it, the individual parts had stood up quite well. So much so that Jenny realized she was probably not going to be able to use everything that was available in her new mode of transport.

The new ship, she'd decided, was going to be nothing like the old one. Instead, it was going to be a TARDIS.

_Time and Relative Dimension in Space_. Jenny frowned as the words floated through her head mockingly. Perhaps, more accurately, she should say it was going to be _like_ a TARDIS. A TARDIS imitation. It would include some of a TARDIS' basic functions – most specifically, the ability to travel through time and space. Courtesy of Jack's manipulator, of course.

Unfortunately, there would have to be several key ways that it would differ from a real TARDIS. One, in the fact that a real TARDIS was a living thing, and hers would have to be purely mechanical – and as such, much less complex. More like a robot that was based on a TARDIS.

Jenny nodded to herself once, more comfortable with this description.

The second reason this wouldn't really be a TARDIS was that TARDISes, almost by definition, could work in twelve dimensions and this machine would necessarily be confined to three (four, including the time travel aspect, which Jenny didn't count because that would be facilitated by the manipulator). It wasn't that Jenny herself couldn't work with twelve dimensions – actually, she was sure she could, given the opportunity – but that the materials she had to work with couldn't. Just as she couldn't build a 4D object using a piece of string, she couldn't build a 12D object using the pieces of a three dimensional spaceship. It just couldn't be done.

A frown creased her forehead once more. A robot that was _very loosely_ based on a TARDIS then. As the plans formed in her head, it seemed to her that this was actually going to be more like a cardboard cut-out of a TARDIS than a robot. A very flimsy cardboard cut-out.

Nonetheless, she worked on it nearly constantly over the next weeks, sometimes for days at a time. This, according to Jack, was conclusive evidence that she really _was_ the Doctor's daughter, since she didn't need much sleep. He visited often, though soon found that there wasn't much he could do to help and anyway, Jenny wouldn't let him.

"We have six weeks here, Jack," she told him firmly, on the very first day. "These are the last six weeks that you're going to see most of them. _Ever. _Don't waste that time in here, with me."

After that, he spent most of the days doing...whatever it was Torchwood did all day. Monitoring rift activity. He still came down at night, however, since as it turned out, he didn't need to sleep either.

Occasionally, one of the others would come down as well – usually Gwen, who seemed very interested in what she was doing. Unfortunately, Jenny found she didn't know the words to describe it so that Gwen could understand, so eventually she stopped trying.

Meanwhile, the task she'd assigned to Jack – deciding what all he was going to tell the team – was not going nearly so well. Jenny was sure that he'd be able to figure out what his last self in this situation must've done if he just thought it through; after all, that self would've been having the same problems he was now, and it had obviously worked out fine for him. Despite her constant assurances to this effect, he still wasn't having any luck.

"Well, how did they act when you came back?" Jenny asked, perhaps for the hundredth time.

Jack sighed. "Jenny, everything I remember about coming back gives the indication that I'd been gone for three solid months," he told her, night after night. "That they'd been on their own that whole time. They were organized, Gwen was leading as though she had been her whole life. If anything, they just seemed shocked when I turned up again – like they'd never expected to see me again."

"Maybe they didn't," Jenny suggested. "Maybe that's the impression you're supposed to give when we leave."

Jack shook his head. "They never said anything about you, or anything to do with this -" he gestured around them, indication the situation they were in. "-they never mentioned it at all. If we had just abandoned them, then they definitely would've."

Nodding, Jenny sighed heavily. She didn't think Jack was used to this – spending time trying to figure things out. Unlike Jenny, it seemed he actually worked _better_ when under pressure. Although, as the time allotted to come up with the right course of action was slowly running out, pressure was certainly building, it just wasn't the same as a life-or-death situation.

"Why six weeks?" Jenny asked suddenly. "I know three months was too long, but why six weeks in particular?"

Shrugging, Jack answered. "No reason, really. Three months was too long, a week was too short – I had about two seconds to come up with a good time period and that was the one I chose. Besides, it gives them about a month to get organized before I come back again, because it was obvious they had _some_ time, if not actually the three months I originally assumed."

"I don't suppose..." Jenny trailed off, thinking. "Is there anyway for them to just...forget that we were ever here?"

Again, he shook his head. "Well, we have this amnesia pill – retcon, it's called – but it would erase everything from a certain time period. There was one time, not too long after I come back, that we all lost two days for some reason we never found out. The Time Agency took two years from me once; it's why I quit. The point is, if they take retcon, they _would_ notice the difference and probably would've mentioned it, too. Which they never did." He suddenly exclaimed in frustration. "Look, if this has happened before, then why couldn't I have left myself some clue as to what to do?"

**Gwen's POV:**

_I can't fathom what Jenny does all day with the remains of her spaceship. The first few times I asked, the answers were so complex that she soon gave up trying to explain – now all she'll say is that she's "fixing" it. Which could mean absolutely anything. So far, there's really not anything visibly different about it and she's been "fixing" it for a week now._

_Jack, though, is working with the rest of us again. I mention this, because I think he tried helping Jenny once and was rejected; whether because she didn't need his help or didn't want it - or because he couldn't help anyway – I couldn't tell, but she was quite forceful about it. Now he's fallen back into the role of leader naturally enough. Sometimes it seems just like it did before. Other times I can't help remembering how he told Jenny to take no more than six weeks to fix her ship and I wonder whether he's really going to leave with her when she's done._

_And sometimes, just occasionally, something is...different. Jack is different. Most of the time, I don't notice anything, but then he'll say something or do something that feels wrong. I can't tell if anyone else has noticed this. Maybe I'm just seeing things that aren't there. Maybe._

**Jenny's POV:**

"Jack, is Gwen in love with you or something?"

"What?"

"Is Gwen in love with you?" Jenny repeated, sighing.

"No!" He answered immediately. "At least, I don't think so. Why are you asking, anyway?"

"I don't know," Jenny shrugged. "Just the way she looks at you sometimes."

"Oh...well, Gwen's married, and - "

Gwen had come up to them, just in time to hear the final words. "_What_!" She exclaimed. "I'm not married! I am most _definitely_ not married." Her eyes narrowed slightly. "So, why say I am?"

"I wasn't saying you actually _are_ married," Jack said quickly. "I just meant, you've been with Rhys so long that you might as well be."

She still looked a little suspicious, but she nodded. "Well, yes, I have a long-time boyfriend – but that doesn't mean we're nearly married. Believe me, we're not getting married any time soon."

Then she smiled and left the room rather quickly. Jenny watched after her, wondering whether that smile hadn't seemed a little bit forced. She turned back to Jack. "So, she's _going_ to be married – in your past, her future? To this boyfriend of hers, Rhys?"

"Yeah..." he answered, lost in thought, staring at the door after Gwen. "It's not all that far in her future, either. She's engaged by the time I come back, and I think she had been for awhile. A few weeks, anyway. But, if she's so against the idea now – "

"Then what changes her mind between now and then?" Jenny finished, nodding. Then she hesitated. "Jack, are you _sure_ she's not in love with you?"

"Not any more."

**Gwen's POV**

"Ianto? Do you have a minute?" Gwen asked, after emerging from what had become Jenny's workroom. Something had definitely not been right in there – she was not married, she was not _close_ to getting married. And the Jack she knew would not equate her relationship to marriage anyway. Not even if it had been remotely like it.

There was no longer any doubt in her mind that something had happened to Jack, something that had changed him completely. Now, she absolutely had to talk to someone about it. Ianto was her first choice, because she thought he probably knew Jack better than any of them.

"Yeah, what's up?" Ianto asked, glancing up at her.

Sitting down next to him, she said very quietly, "Do you think there's anything..." She paused, searching for the right word. "...strange about Jack?"

"Jack is the strangest bloke I've ever met," he answered in the same tone. "Including all the aliens we find. But you mean since he's come back – and yes, I have."

"Thank God, I'm not the only one then," she whispered fervently. "It's little things, right – things that just seem off somehow, but you can't figure out why?"

"Mostly," Ianto nodded. "But occasionally, I'll see him looking at me and..." He trailed off.

"And?" Gwen prompted.

"It's like he's...sad, or something. Like he knows something, and whatever it is, it's breaking his heart." Ianto finished.

Gwen frowned. While this certainly seemed out of the ordinary, it didn't really fit with anything she'd noticed. Before she could reply though, Tosh spoke from behind her. "Are we talking about what's so different about Jack since he came back? Because I've seen that look, too." Evidently, she and Owen had noticed them talking and come over to see why.

"And me," Owen added. "But why – what does he know and why isn't he telling us?"

"Because Jack never tells us anything," Tosh told him bitterly.

Gwen shook her head. "No," she said. "It's more than that, I think. Unsettling looks and odd feelings aside – just now, I heard him tell Jenny that I'm married." She raised her eyebrows at the group and they looked duly shocked. "Look, what if..." She took a deep breath, knowing she had to say it, but not really wanting to. "What if it's not him? What if whoever came out of that ship isn't really Jack, but just looks like him?"

Everyone was silent for a minute. It wasn't something they liked thinking about – but, being in their line of work, they all knew it was a possibility that could not be denied.

"He survived the crash," Tosh said eventually. "Who else could do that?"

"They _say_ he survived the crash," Gwen corrected, shaking her head. "We don't know what happened in that crash, not really. We just have their word for it. We haven't actually seen Jack die since he came back."

"Ok, so say Jack and Jenny aren't who they say they are – that they're actually aliens infiltrating Torchwood so they can take over the world or whatever – then how would they know to look and act like Jack?" Owen pointed out.

"Tosh, maybe," Gwen answered. "She was reminded of Jack from the wristband and Jenny's nonchalance about his death. So, they're psychic or something and, I don't know, constructed an image of him from our memories. But our memories aren't perfect, obviously, so neither is the image."

"That's assuming an awful lot, Gwen," Owen cautioned. "Aliens with both psychic powers _and_ shape-shifting abilities crash land on Earth – and not only are we there when it happens, but they just happened to have a wristband that looks like Jack's? It doesn't seem very likely."

Gwen sighed. "You're right, it was just an idea. But there's something wrong, we know that much, don't we?" They nodded.

"We could just ask him," Ianto suggested.

"When has that _ever_ worked?" Gwen asked him. "Whether that's Jack or an alien, he still doesn't answer questions."

"Just an idea," he said. "And it never hurts to try."

Gwen wasn't sure she agreed – if she was right and Jack was _not_ actually Jack, then asking him anything would only alert whoever (or _what_ever) he really was to the fact that they were on to something. However, at this point, Jack himself came out of Jenny's workroom, followed by Jenny, so she had no chance to point this out. Gwen glanced at Ianto, but neither he nor anyone else asked any questions.

Evidently, though, they still looked anxious from the conversation, because as he approached, Jack looked a little worried. "You ok?" he asked.

"Yeah, fine," Gwen said quickly, as the others gave variations of this answer.

Perhaps they'd spoken a little _too_ quickly, because he only looked more worried. "You sure?"

Again, Gwen started to nod, but then she changed her mind. "No," she said, and without warning, she raised her gun – only then realizing that she'd been gripping it for the past minute. She heard a slight gasp from Tosh and Owen jerked a little in surprise. Ignoring them, Gwen spoke to Jack. "Who are you?"

"Well, that was unexpected," he said – though, unlike Tosh and Owen, he hadn't so much as blinked when she drew the weapon and his tone was mild. It was a good sign, Gwen told herself. After all, if this really _was _Jack, then a gun couldn't kill him. And if it wasn't...

Well, she was supposed to be finding out whether or not it was really him. "Who are you?" She repeated.

"Jack Harkness," he answered, sounding for all the world like he was simply introducing himself, albeit to a group of people who were _supposed_ to already know him. "Captain, 133 squadron. Leader of Torchwood and your best friend for...for longer than you know, actually."

"What's that supposed to mean?" Tosh demanded.

"I'm from the future," he told her quietly.

Owen snorted. "Yeah, we've guessed that," he said.

"I don't mean I'm from a future time period in general – though I am that," Jack admitted, which, Gwen realized, he'd never really done before. Never denied it, but never really said so either. "I'm from _your _future – the future of the four of you, of Torchwood. I'm a future version of the man you know."

"So," Tosh said slowly. "You know things – you remember things that haven't actually happened to us yet?"

"Yes."

_Gwen's married_, Gwen remembered him saying. Was it possible? Had he just been telling Jenny about her being married in the _future_, but talking about it in present tense...because it had already happened, for him?

"Prove it," Gwen ordered suddenly, hand tightening slightly on the gun. "Prove it."

Jack sighed. "You can kill me, if you want, Gwen. I'll just come back, like always – which will, I suppose, prove my identity more effectively than anything I might tell you. But it won't prove I'm from the future."

"Could anything?" Tosh asked. "I mean, what could he say to convince us he's really from the future?"

"I don't know," Gwen said through clenched teeth. "But he'd better come up with something."

"I know a way," Jack said. "It involves telling something that I probably shouldn't though - so Tosh." He turned to her. "I want your word right now that after I tell you something that you should never have to know, you'll confirm it for Gwen, then take retcon to forget I ever told you."

"Why me?" Tosh asked.

"You'll understand when I tell you," he told her. "Your word?"

Tosh nodded and then Jack whispered something in her ear that Gwen couldn't make out. Apparently, Tosh could and whatever it was completely shocked her; her eyes went very wide, and she took a few involuntary steps back from Jack, hands covering her mouth. When Gwen looked back at Jack, she understood what Ianto had meant when he described the look that Jack had sometimes given him. He was wearing that look now - and Gwen thought she'd never seen him so sad. "Tosh?" Gwen whispered, wondering what could've affected them both like that. "Tosh, what did he say?"

Tosh shook her head. "He's telling the truth, Gwen. He really is from the future - he has to be." Then she walked away, presumably to go take the retcon.

"So, are you good?" Jack asked Gwen, all traces of his previous expression completely gone.

"Almost," she said. Then she aimed the gun again and pulled the trigger.

**Shameless advertisement of self: I wrote a fluffy, Jack/Rose one-shot while trying to write this chapter yesterday. It's really short, but my mom liked it - of course, my mom doesn't actually watch Doctor Who, so she doesn't know who Jack and Rose even _are_ and probably only liked it because, well, she's my _mom_ and she likes whatever I write...anyway, you should all go read it and review it and favorite it and stuff. Actually, leave off the stuff - about the only things left to do are put it on story alert (which, as it's a one-shot, will cause me to send you virtual strange looks) or report it for possible abuse (and please don't, thank you!).**

**Please review!**


	7. Blast in the Past: Epilogue

**Becoming a Time Lady**

******Disclaimer: I don't own Jack or Jenny. Or Owen. Or Tosh or Gwen or Ianto.**

_**Blast in the Past: Epilogue**_

"What did you tell her?"

Jenny had waited what seemed like forever – but was really only about a week – to ask the question. In the meantime, her TARDIS imitation had been "completed" (which basically meant it was an operational, but not very comfortable, mode of transportation), Tosh had been briefly told what she'd missed in the hours that retcon had erased, and the entire team had agreed to not mention this encounter to Jack the next time they saw him.

Jack had refused to tell them when that would be, because, as he said, he wanted to "surprise them." Jenny thought this was probably because he wanted to believe that their shock at seeing him again hadn't been _completely_ feigned. Even if the rest of the meeting had been.

The night before they were going to leave, Gwen had come down to Jenny's workroom for the last time. "Wow," she said, looking at what they were calling, for now, the finished spaceship. "It's not very...sightly, is it?" She asked, uncertainly.

"No," Jenny laughed. Actually, all it really was was an oblong, metal box with the corners cut off. Very awkwardly shaped; Jenny had decided to keep the invisibility shields on until that could be fixed. "But bear in mind, I only had half the time I originally said I'd need to build this. It's not really done, yet."

Gwen nodded, slowly. "How is it supposed to fly?" For some reason, Jenny thought she seemed uncomfortable. Like she was forcing conversation as she tried to bring herself to say something.

"It's not," Jenny explained. "It works by teleportation." She hoped the small talk wouldn't go on for much longer. For one thing, she was curious as to what Gwen really wanted to talk about.

She was in luck, because just then, Gwen said it. "He's going to leave again, isn't he?"

"Yes." Jenny knew it hadn't really been a question. It was the only logical conclusion, a conclusion she herself had come to weeks before.

"Why?"

"I...can't talk about the future," Jenny stumbled slightly over the words. "Besides, I don't really know much more than you do."

Nodding again, Gwen looked down at her hands. Or rather, at one of her hands; then she held it up to show Jenny the diamond ring on her finger. "Rhys proposed." She said, a little unnecessarily. "Yesterday. I'm engaged. To be married." She sighed heavily. "I never expected that, not this soon. Still," she added, now sounding brisk. "I did _not_ say yes because I overheard him saying I was going to. Not...entirely, at least. It wasn't entirely because of you, either."

"Me?" Jenny was startled. "Why would it have anything to do with me?"

Gwen chuckled. "You haven't noticed, I see. That's fine, though I'm sure you will eventually." It seemed that Jenny's confusion was plain, because Gwen continued. "I'll tell you this: I've never seen him happier than when he's with you, talking about your ship in that...future-y...techno-babble language that you both seem fluent in." She started giggling at "techno-babble" and Jenny had joined in by the end of the sentence. "Anyway," Gwen said when she'd gotten her breath back. "It was nice to meet you, Jenny."

She held out her hand for Jenny to shake, which she did, murmuring, "And you."

Now, Jenny and Jack were far away from Torchwood, Cardiff, and Earth itself. Jenny wasn't exactly sure where they were, because they hadn't decided on the a destination yet. At the moment, they were just in some random portion of the galaxy, floating through space until they thought of somewhere better to go. Before they did that, however, Jenny wanted an answer to the question that had been pressing on her since Gwen had demanded proof from Jack.

"What did you tell Tosh?" Jenny asked again, a little more insistently.

"Exactly what no one should ever have to hear," Jack replied. "I let her know that she had died in my past."

"How?"

"There's a message in Tosh's computer – one that will only be sent when her status has been officially changed to 'deceased' on the files," He explained. "In it, she mentioned that she hope she hadn't been killed by 'crossing the road or an incident with a toaster' – those were her exact words and _those_ are the words I whispered in her ear."

Jenny nodded, understanding. She fell silent for a few minutes, wondering what it must've been like – to watch his friends die and then, years later, see them again for a few short weeks. And then have to say good-bye once more.

Jack broke the silence first. "So, where to now?"

**A/N: This really is the last chapter in the 'Blast in the Past' section. I didn't realize that section was going to be so long! Not that I'm complaining...though actually...to tell the truth, I have gotten tired of writing about Gwen. She's my favorite Torchwood character (Jack's my favorite from Doctor Who – he doesn't get favorites from two TV shows!) by I don't think I really understand her well enough to write her well.**

**Anyway, these past couple chapters were _supposed_ to explain a few lines from 'Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang' that I'd never understood and decided to invent reasons for. The lines were:**

**Gwen: "It's typical Jack, isn't it? He disappears, he comes back, then he runs away again." (Had he done this sort of thing before? Because I don't remember it.)**

**Gwen: "We don't even know his real name."  
Tosh: "Or which time he comes from." (Am I wrong – had he actually _told_ them he was from a different time, or did they just assume?)**

**(talking about Gwen's engagement)  
****Jack: "And you said yes?"  
****Gwen: "Well, no one else will have me."**

**This last is the line I find most confusing and the one I (tried) to focus on explaining in the last two chapters. If I failed miserably at getting my point across...sorry.**

**Here's a summary of what I was trying to mean: Gwen _was_ in love with Jack during the first season. She harbored secret hopes that they might get together someday, which is why marriage seemed out of the question for her. When she learned that not only did she get married in the future, but that Jack was going to leave (and seemed to be falling for Jenny), she gave up on him and married Rhys instead.**

**Does that make any sense? And also, perhaps more importantly – had you already got most of it from the story? I really did try.**

**Please review!**


	8. The Great Ice Cliffs: Prologue

**Becoming a Time Lady**

******Disclaimer: I don't own Doctor Who or Torchwood. I don't own the pictures used for the cover either, though I _did_ put them together.**

_**The Great Ice Cliffs: Prologue**_

Jenny had come to a decision about where they would go next. There was no question about whether it was a good idea, in her mind, none at all. In fact, she didn't even bother asking Jack and ignored his questions when she began setting the location. Slightly annoyed, Jack gave up asking.

His annoyance vanished as soon as they stepped outside. "The Great Ice Cliffs of Henaphore?" He asked, for that was exactly where they were.

"Yep. A few years after I was here last time," Jenny answered. "I...wanted to see them again."

In truth, while the Ice Cliffs were as beautiful as she remembered, she probably wouldn't have thought to return if she hadn't remembered that Jack had once expressed an interest in going. She also hadn't liked how depressed he'd been after leaving Earth – however hard he tried to hide it, it was obvious to Jenny that their brief time spent there had awoken old memories that he would rather not think about. The worst of which she was sure he hadn't told her. She hoped bringing him here might let him think about something else.

It seemed to be working. "Brilliant," he whispered, moving toward the edge of the cliff where they'd arrived.

Then, out loud, he said, "So, let's see, you're the Doctor's daughter," He sat down on the ice, next to the drop-off and motioned for her to join him. She did, slightly more cautiously; they were actually a little closer to the edge than she would've liked. Apparently he noticed the hesitation. "Jenny, you're not going to fall."

She smiled and relaxed slightly. "You were saying?"

"Well, that you're the Doctor's daughter, so – as nice as the view is – I seriously doubt you came back her just to look at it." He answered. Jenny wonder whether he'd guessed the real reason, but when he went on, it was on the wrong track completely. "Did you get another distress signal?"

"Nope," she said. "There have been no distress signals sent from these Cliffs since the day I was last here."

"Aha!" He exclaimed. "And you find the lack of signals itself to be suspicious." While Jenny could see a point to this logic, he had obviously meant it as a joke.

Laughing, Jenny said, "You do know that I'm his _daughter_, not the Doctor himself?"

Jack shrugged and replied mysteriously, "So you say...Anyway," he went back to being serious. "What was it that you did here last time?"

"Oh, there was a group of Gowls that were lost. I gave them a lift out of the Cliffs," Jenny summarized quickly.

"These Gowls – what do they look like?"

Jenny paused, thinking back over the past weeks to her one, brief encounter. "Basically humanoid," she said. "Two arms, two legs, that sort of thing. Except they've got really think, white fur and really, really, dark eyes."

"So...like polar bears?" Jack suggested.

Jenny shook her head firmly. "No, nothing like polar bears. Well, other than the colouring, obviously. They're very slim and slightly shorter than humans."

"Interesting – doesn't really seem like the right body type for this climate," Jack pointed out. "It's freezing out here. Aren't you cold?" Jenny, as always, was wearing the green shirt and black pants that she'd been progenated with. They were durable and self-cleaning, so she didn't need a change of clothes – a good thing, since she didn't have any.

In response to the question, Jenny shrugged. "I'm fine. And for the Gowls, I guess the fur does most of the work. Besides, it's really only cold on the Cliffs themselves. I came from space last time, obviously, and I saw a lot of green on the rest of the planet." That was one problem with having a ship that teleported rather than flying. You only saw the views if you were specifically looking for it. Jenny glanced back at her ship and grimaced slightly – there hadn't yet been time to make any modifications to the outside. She wished, not for the first time, that it looked more interesting. "She doesn't even have a name..." she murmured sadly. Then she added to Jack, "What do you think we should call her?"

"You said it was based on the TARDIS?" He asked, looking thoughtful.

"Yeah, loosely, but she's not a TARDIS," she replied. "Time and _Relative Dimension_ in Space? Don't see any relative dimensions here."

"No," Jack said. "But it's three dimensional, right? Time and Three Dimensions in Space? TATDIS?"

"Absolutely not!" Jenny laughed.

"Ok, then...4-DITAS. Four Dimensions in Time and Space?"

"'4Ditas'?" She repeated, disbelieving. "You're kidding, right?"

But Jack was already coming up with another one. "Or Three Dimensions in Space and One Dimensions in Time. 3-DiS-a-1-DiT."

"My ship is in desperate need of a name and you are _not_ taking this seriously!" Jenny said, shaking her head and trying hard not to laugh.

"Oh, well, why should I?" he asked, making no such effort. "It's your ship – if you want a name, name it yourself. My question is, why did you base it off the TARDIS in the first place?"

"The Doctor has a TARDIS, doesn't he?" She asked.

"Yeah," he answered. "Otherwise I wouldn't know a thing about them. But, Jenny, you said it yourself – you're _not_ the Doctor."

"Well, I can try, can't I?"

"Sure, you can try – but why? You're not the Doctor and you never will be. You're _you_ – you're Jenny. Why try to be someone else.

She shook her head. "You wouldn't understand, Jack. You've had hundreds of years – _lifetimes, _not to mention a childhood – to discover who you are, to become who you want to be. Be who I am? Well, who _am_ I? I've had only months of life and you've known me for most of it, so you probably know as well as I do. Before that, my life was so jumbled, even in the first few hours. The personality I was born with was such a cold one, filled with false information and the instinct to destroy.

"The Doctor saved me from that. No action I took because of the way I was..._programmed_ was the right one. Nothing I did was good enough for him. So I tried to change – I changed for him. And I did it by becoming like him, by doing what I thought he would do. Because that was all I knew." Jenny sighed heavily. "It's _still_ most of what I know."

"You think I don't understand that?" Jack asked incredulously. "I understand you perfectly, Jenny. It was the same for me, when I first met him. At the time, it seemed like he just enjoyed criticising, but now..."

He trailed off, but she finished the sentence. "Now you know why he did it. Constant criticism only urges you to become better."

"Exactly," Jack grinned. "The Doctor brings out the best in people, as long as they're willing to listen to him."

"My problem is that I didn't really have a best to be brought out. I changed _everything_ to become the Doctor's daughter." Jenny said. She was looking out over the sparkling ice cliffs that stretched for miles in front of them, but she wasn't really seeing them. "And now, I don't know how to be anything else."

Jack put a comforting hand on her shoulder, then turned her head so she was facing him again. "Maybe I can help you there," he whispered, before bring his lips to meet hers.

Jenny closed her eyes and kissed back.

**A/N: You would not believe how long that kiss took to write. I've been planning it, along with the 'you're not the Doctor' conversation, in my head for weeks and only managed to actually write them today. Now, from previous experience, I know the things I spend the most time planning always turn out to be worst when they're finished. So...sorry.**

**On the plus side, while I spent the past month unable to finish _this_ chapter, I've also been working on the next one and _it_ is nearly complete. It should be up in a few days. 'Should' being the operative word.  
**

**Please review!**


	9. The Great Ice Cliffs: Part 1

**Becoming a Time Lady**

**Disclaimer: I own nothing that is Doctor Who or Torchwood related.**

**A/N: One of Jenny's Time Lady abilities comes into this chapter, though she doesn't know it yet. I've dropped as many hints as I could think of throughout the chapter as to what it is, but some of them are pretty subtle. I challenge you to find them and guess what ability it is.**

_**The Great Ice Cliffs: Lost to the Ice**_

Finally the kiss was over, though Jenny didn't quite know why. Perhaps it was to breathe. That was it. Breathing. Now that she thought about it, she _was_ breathing heavily. They both were.

"There's something to show you're not the Doctor," Jack told her, smiling.

"What?" Jenny asked, a little playfully. "He wouldn't kiss you?"

She laughed, though Jack only shrugged. "No, I mean, if you were the Doctor, we would never have gotten that far." He suddenly got to his feet, pulling her up too. "If you were the Doctor, then something...should've..." He trailed off, looking at something beyond her.

Jenny wasn't sure she wanted to look. "Something should've...?" She prompted nervously, hoping the worry in his expression would turn out to be a joke.

"Gone wrong. Something should've gone wrong by now." He finished slowly, looking back at her. "Jen? Please tell me you left the invisibility shields on."

"No, I – oh, no," she quickly turned around to find that her ship was gone. She'd left the shields off because, one, there was no one up here to see it anyway, and two, there were no good landmarks to park it by. The terrain was featureless ice fields and cliffs in three directions and a sharp drop-off in the fourth. Turning on invisibility would only be asking to lose track of the ship.

And yet, invisible or not, it seemed they had managed to do just that. Hoping the shields had somehow activated on their own – though she was sure her new programming would stop things like that – Jenny ran over to where her ship _should _have been. Where it _had_ been, only minutes before. She found nothing. Not even all the shields activated at once would make it intangible. It quite simply was not _there_, any more.

"Where...did the ship go?" She asked, keeping her voice calm with an effort.

Jack was shaking his head, looking down at the vortex manipulator that was back on his wrist – Jenny had, as planned, made its connection to the ship wireless. "Nowhere. The ship's coordinates haven't changed. It hasn't moved."

"So...?"

"_It_ didn't move – we did."

Jenny closed her eyes for a moment of process that. Then she opened them again and looked around. The Cliffs went on for hundreds of miles in all directions and she certainly didn't know them well enough to tell one area from any other. The only thing she could as noticeably different about the terrain was that, rather than being right next to the edge, the nearest drop-off seemed to be several hundred feet away.

"Ok..." she said slowly. "We've moved. Teleported, I suppose?" Jack nodded. "By who, then? And why? Also, how did we not notice that?"

"Well, we _were_...busy," Jack pointed out.

Jenny raised her eyebrows. "Too busy to notice being _teleported_?" She hadn't been _that_ into the kiss. Surely she hadn't.

Jack nodded. "It's been known to happen. I teleported the Doctor once and he didn't notice until I told him so. And _he _had only been busy talking."

Jenny nearly asked what that was about, then thought better of it. Stories could be told later, once they'd gotten back to the ship. "Can we teleport back?"

"Well...no. Something's jamming the vortex manipulator," he answered slowly, unsuccessfully pressing buttons. "_Nothing_ should be able to do that!" He glared at the device, but Jenny felt a smile spreading across her face slowly.

"Looks like you spoke too soon, Captain," she muttered.

"What?"

"About something going wrong," she explained. "You said that if I were the Doctor, something would've gone wrong by now. Well - "

Before she could finish, she was cut off by a scream. But, Jenny noted even as they spun to find the source, it hadn't sounded like someone had just started screaming – more like they'd only just become audible. _Like they'd teleported here in the middle of a scream._ She thought.

The realization came to her in just under the amount of time it took to turn around, so it was no surprise to her when she she saw a little Gowl girl standing about 20 feet away where there had previously been only ice for as far as they could see. Her mouth was open wide in a pitiful wail.

Perhaps due to her lack of initial shock, Jenny reached the young Gowl several seconds before Jack. "Shh, shh, sweetheart," Jenny murmured, kneeling next to her. "Oh, sweetie, what's wrong?"

The answer was a string of incomprehensible words as streams of tears poured down the girl's furred cheeks. "It's all right, sweetheart, it really is," Jenny was quickly discovering that she was not a natural when it came to comforting. "Listen – what's your name? Can you tell me your name?"

Slowly, she sobs began to subside. "Ola," she whispered finally. "My name is Ola."

Jenny smiled in relief. "Nice to meet you Ola. I'm Jenny. Now, can you tell me what's happened?"

It was probably the wrong thing to say, because Ola immediately began crying again. Still, she _did_ need to know what was upsetting her and she wasn't sure what else she could've said. The response was, at least, understandable. "Where's mama?" she asked. "My mama was gathering firewood, and I was helping her, because I'm old enough now. Where's my mama?"

Firewood? That was a surprise. It meant Ola had been teleported from some distance, since they were in the middle of the Cliffs, with nothing but ice in any direction...or they had been, before she and Jack had been moved unexpectedly. Now she had no idea where they were.

Jenny stroked Ola's fur absentmindedly as she thought. Still watching the girl sympathetically, she said, "Jack? Could you go see if there's a forest at the base of the cliff? Any trees, really."

Glancing up, she saw him watching her, looking confused. "Sorry, what?"

It was her turn to be confused. "Forest? Trees? At the base of the Cliff?" She repeated. "Could you go see?"

"Oh. Yeah, sure." He said quickly and left in the direction of the cliff. Jenny watched him go, brow furrowed, wondering why he'd needed the repeat. She doubted he hadn't been paying attention and she _thought_ she'd spoken clearly enough.

Deciding it probably wasn't important – and if it was, Jack had better say something – Jenny turned back to Ola. "What happened, sweetheart? Can you describe it to me? You were gathering firewood..."

It seemed that Ola had gained some control over her tears. The story she told was broken and slightly confusing, but Jenny thought she understood most of it.

Ola's family was from a small village just outside the Ice Cliffs. She and her mother had been collecting firewood from the forest that separated them from the ice. Ola had strayed farther than she was supposed to, closer to the Cliffs than most of the villagers were willing to go – when Jenny asked why they weren't, Ola only shook her head and said they didn't dare.

As Ola described it, the scenery changed when she got too close – the trees disappeared and the ground turned to ice. But that was not when she'd come here, as Jenny initially assumed. Instead, she'd appeared near what she called a 'break in the ice'. When she'd ventured inside this break, she'd seen something that she refused to describe. _That_ was when she'd started screaming and _that_ was when she'd been teleported again.

Sighing, Jenny stood, though Ola continued to clutch her hand. "See anything?" she asked as Jack returned.

"Yeah, there's a forest down there," he answered. "Several lakes, too, and what looks like a group of huts. Is it where she came from?" He nodded toward Ola.

"Could be..." Jenny said slowly. "Though I doubt hers is the only village around the Cliffs, so maybe not. But listen," Quickly, Jenny recounted the child's story.

She'd planned on asking him to try and find something that would qualify as a 'break in the ice' with the manipulator, but it turned out that she didn't have to – even as she finished, he was scanning the surrounding cliffs.

"Ok, there is...something...in _that_ direction," he concluded, gesturing straight into the nearest cliff.

"Oh, that's helpful," Jenny muttered. "Anything more specific?"

"The energy readings are off the scale...and rising." Jack looked up at her, meeting her eyes squarely. "Fast."

"Meaning?"

Instead of answering, Jack offered her his arm. A little warily, Jenny accepted it, though she didn't let go of Ola's hand. "What are we doing?" she asked as he set the vortex manipulator for something.

"Just hold on. I've got an idea."

Perhaps her confusion showed on her face, because he flashed her a reassuring smile...and then everything changed_._

It was a teleport, but it wasn't like teleporting inside the ship, which was fairly calm, nor like the last time they were moved within the Cliffs – any sensations from that had apparently been masked by the kiss. This time, however, the trip was rough and painful. When they reappeared, Jenny staggered and might've fallen over it she hadn't been holding on to Jack – though he seemed to be having the same problems. Ola was starting to cry again, but at least she _had_ come with them.

The disorientation faded quickly and Jenny was able to look around at the trees that surrounded them. Trees – not ice. "We're in the forest," she murmured aloud. "How'd we get here?"

"That energy spike? It was the same type of energy that the vortex manipulator uses to teleport." Jack answered. "It was going to move us anyway, but I managed to direct us here."

"Impressive," Jenny said approvingly.

He didn't look very impressed, himself. "Actually, I was aiming for the village."

"Oh, well, in that case, not impressive at all," Jenny said sarcastically, rolling her eyes. "Considering last time we didn't even know we'd been teleported until after the fact, I _think_ I'll forgive you for being a little off the destination this time." Jack smiled. "Come on, the village is this way," she added, turning to leave.

"How do you know?"

Sighing, Jenny pointed to the sky, which was visible between the branches of the evergreens. "There's smoke rising in that direction."

They reached the origin of the smoke in a matter of minutes. It wasn't actually coming from the village itself, but from some sort of ceremony that was happening just outside it.

"Mama!" Ola squealed, dropping Jenny's hand and running to the Gowl woman who seemed to be presiding over the ceremony.

"Ola?" The woman – presumably Ola's mother – gasped in disbelief. "Ola!"She hugged her daughter tightly and the confusion in the rest of the group turned to relief; several of them started cheering. It was only then that Jenny realized how sombre the mood had been before.

She had no time to think about that, though, because the woman was now hurrying over to them. "You saved her! My baby, you saved her!" And she kissed first Jenny, then Jack, once on each cheek. She then turned back to the rest of the group and announced that the news – that her daughter was alive and well – should be spread through the village. Several of the others ran off to do this.

Ola's mother began nuzzling her daughter affectionately. Jenny spoke hesitantly, unsure whether she should interrupt them. "Excuse me -"

"You've just returned the Matriarch's goddaughter to us." While neither Ola nor her mother had seemed to hear her, another Gowl had approached. "Brought her back from certain death. There is nothing that anyone in this village would not excuse you for," he said, smiling broadly at her.

"Oh...The M-Matriarch's goddaughter?" Jenny stammered.

The Gowl nodded. "You did not think that a funeral would be this extravagant for just any child of the village?"

Jenny opened her mouth in confusion, then closed it again as she understood. The ceremony they'd interrupted had been a _funeral_ ceremony – for the very child they'd found in the Cliffs. "How long was Ola gone for?" She asked, wondering whether they might've travelled in time as well as space. "And who are you?"

"I am Torl, her brother. She was gone for several hours – but the time period matters not. Ola was lost to the ice and – until now – no one has ever returned from the ice." His voice took on an ominous quality at the end. "But you brought her back, and for that we thank you..."

"Jenny," she supplied quickly once she realized he was waiting for a name. Torl's eyes turned to Jack and she gave his name as well.

"We thank you, Jenny and Jack," Torl finished.

After acknowledging the gratitude, Jenny asked, "When you say 'lost to the ice' – what does that mean, exactly?"

Torl hesitated. "If you do not know...perhaps you should speak to the Matriarch." He nodded once. "Yes, you should speak to the Matriarch."

"All right," Jenny said, nodding. She glanced at Jack who, she noticed, hadn't said a word. "You coming?"

After a brief pause, he answered. "No. There's almost no interference here, so I can try to get some readings from the Cliffs."

"Ok," she agreed. "But, hey, don't get too close and get teleported off without me."

"You got it!" He laughed and went back into the forest.

Torl watched him go, looking confused. "He doesn't want to see the Matriarch?"

"Oh no, it's not that. He's going to scan the Cliffs, see if he can figure out why people get lost in them." Jenny told him quickly and he nodded.

"Come, then."

Jenny followed to a large tent in the centre of town. Inside, there was a fire pit in middle and she was led to a seat on one side of it, while a Gowl that Torl introduced as the Matriarch – though she probably could've guessed it – sat across from her. The Matriarch was very old – old enough that her fur had turned dark grey and her black eyes were filled with experience. Jenny was reminded of the Doctor's eyes...and of Jack's.

When the Matriarch spoke, her voice was unexpectedly deep. "So. You brought my goddaughter back from the ice. My thanks. And also, my question: how did you manage it? The ice does not relinquish its victims once it has taken them."

Jenny did not answer immediately. "Perhaps it would be easier if you told me what you know about the ice. How does it...claim its victims?"

The Matriarch spoke slowly. "It has been happening since I was a child. Two hundred years ago. Before that, explorers would go missing, yes, but only if they were careless or exceptionally unlucky. Then, the year I was twelve, something changed. The Cliffs began taking those who strayed too close and even the most adept explorers never returned."

Two hundred years. Jenny knew that was in the years of this planet. Going by the human's calendar, the time period the Matriarch was talking about would be closer to 1000 years past.

"And _no one_ has every come back, in all that time?" Jenny clarified.

"Well..." The Matriarch answered uncertainly. "There were rumours of some survivors around the Hlad Shelf about a year ago. But that's a hundred miles away and I've never believed it."

Jenny smiled. "No, it's true. That was me, too." The smile faded. "I had no idea the problem was so widespread though."

"But how?" How did you save them, and my Ola?" The Matriarch pressed.

Taking a deep breath, Jenny tried to explain. "The Cliffs don't just take people. Anyone inside is subjected to being moved, unexpectedly and uncontrollably, by teleport." The Matriarch showed no sign of recognizing the word, so Jenny defined the word before going on. "This makes them nearly impossible to navigate."

"Then how did you?"

"Nearly impossible, not completely impossible," Jenny said. "My friend and I have a... piece of technology that allows us to choose our destination when we're moved and let's us know where we are." _Or it _would_ if it were working properly_, she added silently.

"Where is this friend of yours?" The Matriarch enquired.

"He's trying to figure out _why_ the Cliffs move people as they do," she answered. "If we can discover how it works, perhaps we can stop it."

"The ice has claimed many victims, over the years," the Matriarch whispered. "If you are able to stop this, then we would sing your praises forever."

As Jenny went to look for Jack after her meeting with the Matriarch, she kept hearing those last words in her head. She wasn't sure what she thought of having people sing her praises. For one thing, no matter what she did, it wouldn't bring back the people who had already been lost to the ice.

She found Jack on the edge of the forest. "Find anything?"

"Yeah. Every few minutes, there's an energy surge from the Cliffs – if you get stuck in it, you get teleported. And I pinpointed where the energy is coming from, so we can probably take one of the surges there."

"Great -"

"But that's not what's interesting," Jack interrupted. "What's interesting is that the energy starts dissipating as soon as it hits the trees. And what's _really_ interesting is that the trees don't grow within, oh, 500 feet of the Cliffs."

"Yeah, it would be too cold, wouldn't it?" Jenny asked.

"You'd think that, yeah. But it's not too cold for these trees to grow there. It's too warm."

"Warm?"

"Warm. I think it must have something to do with the energy."

Jenny closed her eyes for a few seconds. "You're saying that energy is comes out of _Ice _Cliffs – not having any effect on the temperature of the ice – and _then_ heats things up?" Jack nodded. "That's ridiculous." He nodded again.

They gave up trying to figure out the temperature anomaly, deciding that they'd probably learn more at the source of the energy, anyway. So they went as close as they dared to the Cliffs and waited for the next energy surge.

The plan to ride the surge to the place where the energy was coming from worked exactly as it had before – meaning that the trip was uncomfortable and the arrival bumpy and Jenny spent the first few seconds at their new location first regaining her balance, then pressing a hand to her forehead.

Finally, she was able to look around. It appeared that they had done on purpose what Ola had described doing by accident – they'd arrived at what the girl had called a "break" in the ice. Jenny herself decided she would've called it a "crack." It ran vertically through the cliff face, from as high up as they could see to the base, where they were now standing. Here, it was wide enough to enter, if barely.

Jenny glanced at Jack and saw the same spark of excitement in his eyes that the Doctor had had as they ran from Cobb. The same sense of adventure that she felt now – he wanted to know what lay on the other side of that crack as much as she did.

However, she wasn't about to go in without knowing anything about what they might be up against. "Jack, is the manipulator still working?"

"No," he said after checking it briefly. "Which means that whatever is affecting it is close – probably in there." He added, nodding to the crack.

"Wonderful," Jenny muttered. "And what did you say _could_ jam it like that?"

"Nothing."

"How disappointing," she sighed. Then, seeing him frown in confusion, she added. "Guess that means there's nothing in there."

Jack rolled his eyes and chuckled a little darkly. "Maybe I should rephrase that – nothing I _know_ of."

"Ah. Well, that's a bit worse then."

"Yeah..."

Jenny shrugged and started for the crack, but Jack's hand on her shoulder stopped her. "Jen, we have no idea what's in there. Assuming it's something that wants to kill us – which, going by past experience, it nearly always is – wouldn't it better if the one of us who can't die is killed first?"

The logic of the idea only made her dislike it more. "You do know who's in charge here - ?" she began, but he broke in.

"'Course. All the more reason not to risk you going first." With a wink that was nearly identical to the one he'd given when first trying to flirt with her, Jack passed her and headed for the cliff. Grumbling quietly, Jenny followed.

The passage that had been made by the crack was not dark – on the contrary, it was bright enough to blind. Jenny had the vague idea that was because the ice was not only clear enough to let the light from the planet's star through, but it must also focus _all _of it on this exact spot. Or anyway, that's what it felt like, as she tried unsuccessfully to keep her eyes open against it. This was why, when Jack reached the end a few minutes later and stopped, Jenny couldn't actually tell that until she nearly ran into him from behind.

"So. Not something trying to kill us after all," she heard him remark, his voice muffled slightly by the ice.

"What is it?" Jenny asked, but by this point, Jack had moved so she could see for herself. "Oh...wow!" she breathed, stepping forward out of the bright passageway. "It's...a spaceship?" She wasn't sure that word did justice to the magnificent vessel in front of them. The fact that it was crashed – and obviously had been for some time – diminished it's grandeur only slightly. She wondered what it would've looked like when intact.

"Not just any spaceship," Jack told her. "That's the Silver Falcon – the private ship of Thomas L. Gelbrooks."

"Who?"

"He's the Fleet Admiral of the Time Agency," he explained. "Or rather, he _was. _I think that's him – what's left of him anyway."

Sure enough, through the shattered main window of the ship, an ancient skeleton was visible. Jenny, impressed with the ship itself, hadn't seen it at first, but she now thought that was probably what had scared Ola on her visit here. She hoped it was, anyway.

Jenny glanced anxiously from the skeleton to Jack, but his expression was unreadable. "Did you...know him well?" She asked, a little uncertainly, worried she'd managed to bring him to the location of another friend's death.

To her relief, he shook his head. "I didn't know him at all, actually. Not unless you count orders that probably passed through ten other people to get from him to me. I never even met the man."

Jenny carefully made her way over to the ship, to get a closer look at the skeleton of the Fleet Admiral. There was something she didn't think was right about it. "I wonder...ow!" She snatched her hand away from the ship, where she'd casually put it upon reached the window to the control room.

"What's wrong?" asked Jack, coming up beside her.

"Well," Jenny said, shaking her hand as the pain faded quickly. "I was about to wonder why he hadn't been preserved by the cold. However," Cautiously, she brushed her fingers against the hull of the ship again, pulling them back quickly. "This ship is _hot_."

"I'll take a wild guess that you're not calling a spaceship sexy..." Jack remarked as he experimentally brought his own hand closer, before actually touching the metal briefly. "Now, there's something else interesting."

Jenny nodded, guessing that he'd noticed the same thing she had. "The ship is hot – the air around it isn't."

"And neither is the glass," Jack added, tapping on what was left of the window. As most of the glass had broken when the ship crashed, he carefully climbed through the opening, into the control room. From where Jenny was, she could no longer see him at all, her view blocked by the ship itself. She was about to follow when he spoke and she froze.

"Oh, that can't be good."

"What?" She called. After a few seconds of silence, she tried again. "What can't be good? Jack? Come on, Jack, answer me!"

Where there was still no response, she slid through the broken window herself. The ship had obviously been designed to be flown by one person – the control room was not large at all. In fact, with the skeleton lying as it was over the controls, the addition of two more people to the the room would make it rather crowded. Except, there _weren't_ two more people in the room. Jenny was there, Fleet Admiral Thomas L. Gelbrooks was there.

Captain Jack Harkness, on the other had, had vanished completely.

**A/N: A cliffhanger, in the Great Ice Cliffs...ok, yeah, bad pun (-ish like thing), I know. By the way, this is the first time...um, _ever_...that I have used the word 'sexy' in writing. Captain Jack has been a bad influence on me, I think.**

**So, did you guess Jenny's Time Lady ability? ****If so, you can tell me in a review! If not, don't worry, it'll come into the next chapter.**

**Please review!**


	10. The Great Ice Cliffs: Part 2

**Becoming a Time Lady**

**Disclaimer: I don't own Doctor Who or Torchwood.**

**A/N: Sorry about the long wait! For some reason I couldn't get up the motivation to work on this. Thanks to Doctor Ross for giving me the idea that eventually led to inspiration as to how to end this chapter.**

_**The Great Ice Cliffs: Teleportation Energy**_

Jenny closed her eyes, but when she opened them, there was nothing different. Jack was still gone. She swept her eyes around the small control room, searching for somewhere he might've gone or somehow he could've left. Even as she did, Jenny thought about what had happened – he'd spoken once and then, nothing. She supposed it must've been another teleport -

Jenny's gaze landed on what she suddenly knew he'd seen at once. And she fought to stop herself from repeating the last words she'd heard from him. Whatever else it was, Jack had been right; _that_ could not _possibly_ be good.

Unsurprisingly, the Fleet Admiral had a vortex manipulator on his wrist. The devices were standard issue for all Time Agents, so of course he'd have one. What was surprising – and a bit horrifying – was that this vortex manipulator was broken. The cover was missing completely and the buttons were smashed. The most worrying part was that it was glowing a very faint yellow, which was getting brighter even as she watched.

"Teleportation energy?" Jenny muttered under her breath. It was only a guess, but Jack _had_ said that was what the energy surges had been made of. And this certainly seemed to be in the process of surging.

Frantically, Jenny scanned the cabin again for something that might help her _not _be moved when it had built up enough power. She didn't even have a manipulator of her own to direct the destination.

There! The cover had come off the Fleet Admiral's manipulator, but it hadn't gone far. Jenny scooped it up and put it back in it's proper position, trying not to get too close to the ever-increasing glow. It clicked into place and the glow dimmed significantly. She allowed a brief moment to marvel at the material. The metal that the vortex manipulator's casing was made out of was hard to deform and harder to keep that way – when its shape was changed, it would try and change back. It was impressive that it had been broken in the first place, actually.

Jenny hoped it had another property that she didn't know about. Hopefully, it could shield against the energy, at least temporarily. There was still some light forcing its way under the cover, but it wasn't very bright and if it was increasing at all, the rate was too slow for her to be able to tell.

"Ok. Good for now then. Probably," she said aloud.

She then turned to the control panel. Grimacing, she tried lightly tapping Gelbrooks' skeleton off the controls, but as soon as she touched him, he collapsed completely and she quickly dodged out of the way before the arm with the vortex manipulator landed on her foot; she was still wary of that faint light. "Well, it worked," she murmured, briefly remembering that she'd once used the same words to explain why she'd knocked someone out. Dismissing the thought, she dusted off her hands and then bent to examine the controls.

After such an impressive wreck, the Silver Falcon would never fly again, but it was possible that the ship's computer could still be partially functional. Indeed, after only a few minutes of work, the main screen lit up. All lit showed was white light, but Jenny smiled anyway. It meant _something_ was still working.

"Hello! Computer, are you working?"

For a few seconds, the only response was static, but then a voice that could barely be heard replied, "Affirmative." It vaguely sounded female. She wondered whether the gender was a default. "Twenty-seven percent functional."

Jenny groaned inwardly that she'd have to talk with a computer again. Before leaving Cardiff, she'd completely disabled the voice interface on her own ship, planning to bring it back only once she was sure she'd figured out all of its programming. Nevertheless, this ship could potentially be extremely useful in figuring out what exactly had happened to the Ice Cliffs, so she began trying to find a way to increase the power to the computer. "Is that better?" she asked after making an adjustment. The voice wasn't even audible this time. "Nope...all right, how about now?"

The voice that answered was clear enough, but it wasn't anything like the computer's. "Jenny! Jenny, are you still there?"

Jack had had no time to react. He'd raised an arm against the blinding light coming from the Fleet Admiral's wrist and then dropped about two feet through the air, landing on ice somewhere completely different.

It was a Gowl graveyard. There were bodies scattered about for as far as he could see. Unlike Gelbrooks, these _had_ been preserved by the cold. Most of the final expressions that Jack saw looked serene – they'd probably frozen to death. As methods of dying went, that one wasn't too bad.

They were all in what appeared to be a large bowl of ice. There were steep cliffs all around, more or less in a circle. And right in the middle was Jenny's spaceship. He spent only a moment wondering how it had gotten there before heading toward it. For one thing, it was cold outside.

The teleport that had brought him here didn't seem to have taken Jenny as well, but this time they hadn't been touching, so if these surges really were random, then there would be nothing to make them go to the same place. But it was seeming less and less likely that they _were_ completely random. For one thing, all – or at least most - of the Gowls that had even gotten lost in the Cliffs had evidently ended up here. _That_ couldn't be by chance.

Once he was back in the ship, Jack synced the vortex manipulator with the computer as it had been before all the unexpected teleportation had broken the connection. Then he checked the energy readings, waiting for the next surge so he could take it back to the shipwreck, but it never came. The energy levels seemed to be holding, though the teleport on his own device was still jammed. There was no way to get back.

But the fact that the levels were now constant was promising. Perhaps Jenny had _not_ been moved by the last one and had found a way to block any more.

Jack quickly set the computer to search for the wreck, then looked around Jenny's ship as he waited for a result. It was designed surprisingly similar to the TARDIS' control room. Jenny swore she'd never seen the inside of the Doctor's TARDIS – in fact, she'd only a gotten a very brief glimpse of the outside – but then she'd never actually been told the word either; she just knew it. Maybe she just knew what a Time Lord's time and space machine was supposed to look like as well. The room was more mechanical than the TARDIS and set up with the controls in a semicircle in the centre, rather than a full circle. This had been made to be flown by one or two people, rather than 9 or 10 as the TARDIS had. There was also a storage area in the back, which mostly held oxygen, water, and food right then, along with a few tools from the previous ship that Jenny had deemed useful.

One thing that he noticed she'd neglected to include was any sort of living quarters. _He_ didn't actually need to sleep, though he still could, but she was going to have to get some rest at some point. Time Lords and Ladies might need less sleep than humans – but not none at all.

The computer broke into his thoughts by beeping loudly. It had found the Falcon and it appeared that the other ship's computer system was at least partially working, so he opened a comm line to it. "Jenny? Jenny, are you still there?"

"Jack?"

He grinned. "Yep. I'll take that as a 'yes, I'm still here'?"

"I – yeah. Where are you?"

"I'm back on your ship. This 'random' teleporting thing seems to have a dumping ground," he answered and told her about all the Gowls outside.

"I don't think it _is_ random," she replied, sounding grim. "That little Gowl girl, Ola – she was moved to nearly the same place we were and not too long after. That's not random and neither is you and the ship both turning up at the same place where hundreds of Gowls have been sent before."

"You think it's deliberate?"

"No, but I think there's a pattern involved." She sighed. "Anyway, the Fleet Admiral's vortex manipulator is broken. I assume that's bad?"

"Not just bad," Jack told her, grimacing. He'd been trying not to think too much about that. "It's unheard of. They're made to be indestructible. Mine was at the very centre of an explosion and it didn't get scratched."

"But yours _was_ broken, wasn't it?" Jenny pointed out. "When we met, you'd been trying to fix it."

"That's different." He shook his head, though she couldn't actually see him. "It wasn't broken, just disabled, and it's previously been burnt out. Neither time was it actually destroyed or even physically damaged in any way."

"So, when one _does_ get damaged, it starts spewing teleportation energy?"

"Apparently."

There was a long silence from the other end. Then, "Can you pull up a 3D topographical map of the Ice Cliffs and the surrounding area over there? These projectors are shot."

"I...can, yeah..." Jack said slowly, a little confused, as he did it. "Why?"

"So I can do this." As Jenny answered, the surface of the ice in the map began glowing pale yellow, with a few tiny patches of bright yellow dotted over various locations. "I've overlaid it with the teleportation energy readings. What's it look like now?"

"It's spread out pretty evenly over the whole region, but it dissipates fairly soon after leaving the ice; it's pretty much gone by the time it hits the tree line," he told her. "But there's about five places - "

"_About_ five?" Jenny interrupted incredulously. "What's _that_ supposed to mean?"

"Five, there are _exactly_ five places," he corrected himself, though he couldn't help smiling. " Five places where there's a _lot_ of energy. It's like it clustered at certain points."

"And is one of those 'clusters' at your location?"

"Yes," he said, zooming in on the cluster in question. From an aerial viewpoint, it looked even more like a bowl. "And you're at another, several hundred kilometres away. Mine is brighter though. Actually, mine's the brightest out of all of them. Lucky me."

"Ok, theory: the teleportation can happen between places where there's energy and there's energy all over, making this whole area locationally unstable. But it's _more likely_ you'll be sent somewhere where there's _more_ energy," Jenny said carefully. "That's how vortex manipulators work anyway, isn't it? Using the Time Vortex as the energy? Except in the Time Vortex, there's not clusters like here, so the destination can be...controlled..." she suddenly trailed off. "Oh."

"Oh?"

"This vortex manipulator. Gelbrooks' vortex manipulator. It's broken."

"Yeah. What, is it acting up again? For that matter, how'd you stop it in the first place?"

"I just replaced it's cover, which won't work for long, but it's stable right now. No, I mean...Jack," she said, quietly but urgently. "Is it possible that the energy the broken vortex manipulator is spewing is coming _from_ the _Time Vortex_?"

For a few long moments, Jack didn't answer. Just as Jenny had begun to fear he'd somehow been teleported again, he finally said. "I don't know, Jen. It might be possible. Anything's possible." She had just enough time to think his response was less than helpful before he went on. "Except if it is...and really, even if it isn't...I'm not sure you should've covered it like that."

"What?"

"Whatever the source, it didn't stop my vortex manipulator being jammed, but it _did_ stop the energy surges – I can't go anywhere from here, by either its power or my own. Like you said it wasn't a permanent solution. Think about it though. There was enough energy there to cover thousands of square kilometres of ice and now you've stopped it."

Jenny suddenly understood and let out a small gasp. "Pressure," she whispered, glancing at the manipulator. Was it slightly brighter than before?

"That metal is strong, but it's apparently not unbreakable. And this one's already been broken once. What happens when the pressure builds enough to break it again?"

_Nothing good. _ Jenny thought, but didn't say out loud. Instead, she say down on the floor next to the Fleet Admirals' skeletal arm and slid the broken vortex manipulator off of it. "If I'm right, the teleport should take me to you. To my ship."

"What? Jenny, what are you doing?"

"I'm coming," she answered quietly, strapping the manipulator to her own wrist. "I'm coming to you, Jack." Then she flipped open the cover.

There was a blinding flash of light and in the few seconds before I cleared, Jenny contemplated the possible results of her action. The sudden burst of energy hadn't killed her outright, which had been the worst case scenario, and it hadn't sent her anywhere that would kill her more slowly; encased in ice or high in the air. One of the remaining options was that her theory was correct and she'd end up in the same place as Jack and all the Gowls had been sent – if not this trip, then within the first few. Finally, her theory could be wrong and she'd randomly teleport around the Ice Cliff until she froze or starved to death.

Her vision cleared. To her relief, she stood directly next to her ship.

"Jack?" she asked as she entered.

He spun around, looking a bit shocked. "What did you do?"

Jenny held up the vortex manipulator "I took it. I needed to bring it here, find out exactly what's wrong with it."

"Sure...but _what_ did you do?" He asked again. "About 30 seconds ago, this whole map was shining like a star, then it went back to like before. What happened?"

"I opened the cover..." she murmured, coming over to look at the holographic image. "It let out all the energy that had been trapped when I blocked it...did you say the _whole_ map? Not just the Cliffs – beyond them as well?" Jack nodded and she bit her lip anxiously. "Letting the energy build up like that might not have been a very good idea. Settling it all free at once allowed it to break whatever barrier had been keeping it confined to the ice."

"Oh, the villagers," Jack said suddenly, understanding.

"I'm going to leave this open for now, so you should be able to direct the energy surges again. Can you go back to the village and ask them if they were affected when I took off the cover?"

"No." Her confusion was evidently apparent from her expression, because he went on. "I _can't_, no. I don't speak their language."

"They...speak a different language?"

"Of course they do." It was Jack's turn to be confused. "I thought you knew. I mean, you speak it, too."

Jenny froze at the words, mouth slightly open. She thought about talking to Ola and the Matriarch, trying to remember whether there was anything different about their speech – or her own, for that matter, while talking to them. She came up with nothing. As far as she could tell, talking to them had been no different than the conversation she was having now. She _did_ realize that Jack had never actually spoken to any of them, nor they to him. He'd even misunderstood something she said to him while she'd been looking at Ola.

"What language are we speaking - ? Never mind," she cut herself off mid-question. "Not important right now. Still, we _should_ check on the villagers."

"There could be a universal translator on the Falcon. There weren't exactly standard issue for Time Agents – not like vortex manipulators – but they _were_ used for missions in places and times that don't use standard languages. The Fleet Admiral would probably have one. I can go back and check," Jack suggested.

Jenny nodded absently. She was still a little shocked that she could speak a different language without realizing it. As Jack left, she shook herself and then anchored the broken vortex manipulator to her ship. She didn't think it would teleport her any further, because this area was, as Jack had said, the brightest location on the map. Still, if it tried to, it would bring her and the ship along as well.

Jack cursed as he landed in a place that was _not_ the Silver Falcon's control room, though it was probably somewhere on the ship. Probably, though hard to tell for sure – it was pitch black. Feeling around in the dark, he first encountered several wooden crates, then a wall. A few more seconds of fumbling and he found a door handle – locked, but it gave way after a single hard shove.

Jack, along with several of the crates, fell out of what appeared to be a storage closet just off the back part of the Falcon. The old wood splintered on impact with the floor, spilling the boxes' contents. Frowning, he bent to pick up one of the freed objects.

"Vortex manipulators?" he muttered, confused. Just the three crates that had fallen had held dozens of them and there were many more still in the closet. And as he looked around, he saw that the main room of the ship also contained crates. Piles of them, stacked haphazardly wherever there was room. This was not a large ship – more a personal shuttle, really – but as many boxes had been crammed in here as could fit. If they _all_ held vortex manipulators...Jack hadn't even known that many existed.

He opened a few more of the boxes, to find that they, at least, also held the devices. Slightly concerned now – _why_ would Gelbrooks, of all people, be transporting vortex manipulators and why so _many_ – he made his way to the control room.

"Jenny?" he spoke over the comms.

"Here," she answered. "Find anything?"

Jack knew she was talking about the translator, but he glanced back to the room full of crates. "_Something, _yeah..."

Before he could go on, she absently replied, "Good," sounding like she wasn't really paying attention. "Listen, I think I know where the energy clusters came from. When the manipulator was damaged, it started permeating the Ice Cliffs with energy, yes? But it couldn't sent the energy everywhere, because like yours, the Fleet Admiral's vortex manipulator still has a working safety release, even after being broken," she explained at top speed. "It wouldn't surprise me if that part is actually designed to withstand even more than the rest; it _is_ most important."

"Yeah. Look, Jenny - " Jack tried to interrupt, but she wasn't listening.

"Anyway, the manipulator started distributing energy, but doing it unevenly. And the energy is attracted to itself; like mass, you know, gravity? Had the energy been evenly distributed, it would've been stable and anyone in the Cliffs really _would_ be teleported randomly. Instead, it gathered into clusters. Eventually, _all_ of the energy would've ended up in those five places, probably."

Jenny - " he began trying to tell her about the crates again, but this time he cut himself off. "Wait, did you say the energy attracts itself?"

"Yes."

"And it's like gravity, where more of it has a stronger attraction?"

"Well, I hardly have a perfect equation, but it seems so, yes."

Jack paused for a second, thinking. "There's something weird about the damage, isn't there?" he asked suddenly. "There's not just a 'hole' letting energy through like water out of a cracked cup – there's something forcing in out, more like a pump."

"Now that you mention it...yeah, there is," Jenny answered after few minutes. "How'd you know?"

"Basic physics. Nothing moves from a lower potential to a higher potential." Jack flipped open the vortex manipulator that he'd taken from the other room. "All the energy now in the Cliffs had to come from somewhere, so there has to be a lot on the other side. In the Time Vortex, if that's where it's coming from. When the ship crashed, there was _no_ energy here, so damaged manipulator or no, it wouldn't go from a place where there's a lot to a place where there's none if it's attracted to itself. Something else would have to be forcing it." As he spoke, Jack had been changing the settings on the vortex manipulator. "Now, is there any change on the map at the ship's location?" he asked once finished.

"Er...yes, there is," she said, sounding surprised. "It's getting dimmer, just a little. What happened?"

"This ship was, apparently, transporting vortex manipulators. It's full of them. Hundreds, possibly thousands." Jenny gave a choking cough of surprise at the numbers. "I know. Anyway, I set one of them to let the energy back through. The attraction does the rest."

"It's not enough though." Jenny sounded disappointed. "This one's pumping energy into the Cliffs faster than that one is letting it out. Much faster. However...yes!"

"Yes?"

"The vortex manipulators on the Falcon – now that I know they're there, I can detect them from here. There are just over 1000 of them, by the way. And they don't have security yet, so I'm guessing they were never registered to anyone. This makes them extremely easy to hack," she explained.

"What did you do?"

"Well, I haven't actually finished doing it yet, but in a minute, I will have set _all_ the vortex manipulators on that ship – excluding yours – so they'll let the energy back through."

A short time passed in silence. "There!" she cried triumphantly. "The teleportation energy is now leaving the Cliffs at a rates that's about twice the rate it's coming in. It might take a few years to clear them up completely, but after that, anything that comes through will immediately go back. I'm guessing _your _vortex manipulator is working again?"

He checked it, then grinned. "Why, yes it is."

**A/N: So, can you tell I'm a Physics major? We work with potentials in E&M _all_ the time. Anyway, I know there are some plot holes and unanswered questions in this adventure, but I plan to come back to it in a few chapters.**

**Please review!**


	11. The Great Ice Cliffs: Epilogue

**Becoming a Time Lady**

**Disclaimer: I don't own Doctor Who or Torchwood.**

_**The Great Ice Cliffs: Languages (Epilogue)**_

"Language. Talk to me." Jenny crossed her arms firmly as she shut the front door of her ship behind her. Jack didn't answer immediately, so she went on. "I switched languages back there without even realizing it. I still can't remember any difference. How? And why didn't you tell me?"

"I'm supposed to magically know how you're experiencing things?" he asked, obviously trying not to laugh. She grimaced in reluctant agreement. "Since I do know now, I could mention that this isn't the first time."

"What?"

"Not the first time you've switched between languages without difficulty – and apparently without noticing." She continued to stare at him, mouth open in confusion, so he explained. "Cardiff. Earth in the 21st century. You spoke their language fluently."

Jenny closed her mouth, along with her eyes. For a few seconds, she said nothing, trying to process what he'd said. There hadn't been a language transition between meeting Jack on her spaceship and meeting his friends on the Earth – had there? There couldn't have been. Wouldn't he have noticed it then – wouldn't the Torchwood team? "Jack," she began slowly. "What language is _this_? What are we speaking right now?"

"That depends." Jack grinned at her small start of surprise.

"Depends on what?"

"Are you asking what language you asked _that_ question in? Or the first one? Or what I'm saying now?"

She began to understand. "You've been switching."

Jack nodded. "Ever since we learned you didn't actually know what you'd been saying, I've been randomly interjecting words and sentences in all the various languages I know. You haven't noticed, I take it?"

She shook her head. "So...findings?"

"You'll answer me in whatever language I last spoke, unless you initiate the conversation, when you nearly always revert to my first language." He hesitated. "Back in Cardiff, you never slipped – from the day we arrived to the day we left, you spoke nothing but 21st English, even when we were alone. Since I wasn't particularly paying attention back then, however, it could just be that you never actually started talking first."

"What is your first language then?" Jenny wanted to know.

"English, but the English of the 51st century," Jack replied. "It's got a more proper name than that, but I've forgotten what. Anyway, it comes from the same origins as the English of the 21st century, but it's so changed by time and interaction with alien languages that the two might as well be considered completely separate."

"But you must know both of them," Jenny reasoned. "You're perfectly fine on Earth."

"I spent 140 years there. As far as they're concerned, I'm a native speaker, though I do have an accent. It sounds American, close enough that even Americans accept it as one," Jack said. " I knew the language even before than though – my mother was a pre-Space Age Earth scholar, so I learned it from a young age. Otherwise, I know ten or twelve of the galaxy's most common languages – Time Agency requirement."

Jenny nodded. Everything she knew about the Time Agency – which wasn't much, as that was classified information – pointed toward it being an intelligence organization. If it was going to give its agents time and space travel, but no translators, then they'd better already know how to communicate with most locals they came across. "Back to the question at hand, though," Jenny said, sighing. "Why is it that _I _can speak anything?"

"That we might have to ask your father."

"What, you think I inherited this ability?"

"Possibly. _He _certainly seems to do the same thing, though you can never be sure how much is him and how much is the TARDIS." He shrugged. "Like I said, we'd have to ask him."

"Have to find him first. But how?" Jenny wondered, but Jack only shook his head.

"Let's just not try my method," he muttered.

"Waiting for a century? Agreed."

"And that was in a specific location where he was halfway likely to go eventually," Jack added.

"A better idea would be to search out trouble," Jenny decided. "Donna said - " She broke off as he jerked sharply at the name. "You know her?"

"Donna? Donna Noble? I only met her once. She saved the universe...and then permanently lost all memory of the Doctor as a result." Jenny's mouth fell open as Jack murmured. "Poor Donna. Fate worse than death as far as I'm concerned and I'm not only saying that because I'm immortal." Jenny nodded in agreement, mouth suddenly dry – _forget _the Doctor? What would be left? Perhaps Donna had had a former life to return to, but for Jenny herself...she shuddered slightly at the thought. "Anyway," Jack continued. "If Donna told you he goes around saving people, she's right. Chasing down distress signals may not guarantee we'll find him faster than I did, but it will increase the odds. A bit. We can hope. Well, at least there will be interesting things to do in the meantime."

Attempting – and failing – to hold back a smile, Jenny said, "Your confidence is overwhelming."

"Sarcasm, I know, but actually that _is_ extremely overconfident. It's a big universe – and the Doctor can go anywhere and _anywhen_ within it," Jack retorted. "The odds of finding him are extremely slim."

After pondering that for a minute, Jenny nodded in resignation. "Well, first things first, anyway - I have _got_ to finish this ship."

The Gowls were only too happy to let them stay for awhile, so Jenny could complete the job. They even eagerly offered to help and, upon discovering that they were very good at building, she let them work on making the outside of the ship look more presentable, while she and Jack worked their way through the original ship's computer programming.

Two weeks later (by the humans' calendar, which Jenny found she kept track of in her head easily, despite the much longer days of this planet), the ship was done. Jenny smiled as she looked at the finished product. Instead of the dull, misshapen box it had been, it was now shaped as a perfectly geometric octagonal prism at the base, smoothly curving into a dome at the top. There were windows on two of the sides and the storage space was much more economically found underneath the control room, rather than behind it. What Jenny liked best, however, was that the Gowls had coated the outside in a type of pitch that they used in weatherproofing their villages; when used on the metal, it had turned the whole thing a bright silver.

"Sigma Theta," she breathed suddenly.

"What?" Jack, standing beside her, had evidently heard.

"That's what I'm going to call her."

He frowned. "Why?"

Opening her mouth, Jenny found that she didn't actually have an answer to that question, so she closed it again. "Well...I don't know. I just really want to use it." It was just a couple of random letters from the ancient Greek alphabet, but for some reason, she found them to be the perfect name for her ship.

**A/N: Theta Sigma was a nickname of the Doctor's at the Gallifrey Academy - and I did not switch up the words by accident. Well, actually, I did, then noticed it a few minutes later and wanted to keep it, so I made up a reason. Here it is: Jenny, while referring to herself and being referred to by the Doctor as his "daughter", is actually more like a clone, with the DNA randomized. I decided to "randomize" the order of the words to reference this, though as there are only two, the choices were limited.**

**Please review!**


	12. Return to Messaline: Prologue

**Becoming a Time Lady**

**Disclaimer: I don't own anything.**

_**Return to Messaline: Prologue**_

Jenny stared out the window at the Andromeda Galaxy and tried to figure out what it was she was trying to think of. It was a problem, some sort of...wrongness that she'd felt on Messaline, but she couldn't put her finger on what it had been. Of course, many things had been wrong on Messaline, but Jenny had the extremely uncomfortable sense that this particular bit had not been fixed by the Doctor.

"What am I missing...?" she murmured.

"Probably," Jack's voice said from behind her. "Tea." She turned to find him approaching with a cup of Earl Grey tea – the only kind she'd found palatable. Jack was also holding a mug of coffee for himself.

"Thank you," Jenny said, accepting the cup with a smile. "But no, that's not what I was missing."

"What is it, then?"

"I don't know," Jenny sighed and turned her gaze to the stars once more. "Something about Messaline, I think."

"Your home planet?" She nodded. "You _can't_ be homesick already?" asked Jack incredulously.

"Oh, no!" Jenny cried quickly, laughing. "Absolutely not! I'm not missing the _planet_, I'm missing...something that happened there. Or that was happening, or was going to happen. Or something. Besides, Messaline might be my home planet, yes," she added. "But it was hardly a home. I spent more time – and got more welcome – on Earth than I did on Messaline." Most of the time she'd been there, she remembered, had either been spent in a prison cell or running from her own people. Not that there was anything wrong with running, of course; she smiled, remembering Donna's explanation of what the Doctor did, then sighed as she remembered what Jack had said eventually happened to Donna and took a sip of tea. Even as she did so, she realized what it was that had been wrong. "General Cobb!" she whispered excitedly.

"Who?"

Ignoring the question, Jenny asked. "Jack, how old am I?"

"Uh, you were about a week old about six months ago, so...a six months and a week?" he suggested.

"No, no, I mean, how old do I _look_?" Jenny corrected impatiently.

"Is this a trick question?"

Jenny rolled her eyes. "Jack!"

"Ok, ok, twenty...four? Twenty-three?"

"Exactly," Jenny breathed.

"Yeah, there was nothing exact about that answer..." Jack pointed out. "Why are you suddenly interested in this?"

"Because it makes sense," Jenny replied. "I might be less about six months old, but I _look_ like I'm in my early twenties. I feel like that's how old I am, even without twenty years of memory. Always have, probably always will." She had the vague notion that Time Lords didn't age the same way humans did, though she wasn't sure how they _did_ age, nor was she interested enough to wonder about it at the moment.

"If you're going to progenate a population, you might as well do it so they're born in peak physical condition and at the most productive age," she continued. "Twenties, maybe early thirties, yeah?"

"I suppose, yeah..." said Jack, still not understanding where she was going with this. Well, he hadn't been on Messaline – and not even the Doctor had seen this back then.

"Young adult colonists make _sense_ – especially during wartime, when they want soldiers, not just colonists," Jenny explained. "So, what _doesn't_ make sense? Progenating someone old enough to have grey hair and wrinkles."

"And there _was_ someone there with grey hair and wrinkles?" Jack guessed.

Jenny nodded, expression hardening at the memory. "General Cobb." She spent the next few minutes filling Jack in on who General Cobb had been and what he had done. "He didn't want peace," she said through gritted teeth. "He _said_ he did, of course, be he didn't really. I think he would rather have died fighting than set down his gun while any of the Hath still lived.

"But why?" she asked, beginning to pace. "Everyone else was calmed by the terraforming device, I saw it. But not him. Why not? And why did he look so old?"

"Maybe he was," said Jack. "You said all the original colonists were killed, leaving only the children of the machine. But maybe they weren't."

Jenny pondered this. "Possibly...If Cobb was one of the original colonists, then it means he deliberately lied to us – about everything. But I wouldn't put that past him. And his attitude was certainly very similar to the colonists'."

"What were the colonists' attitudes?"

"The same as Cobb's," Jenny said, smiling as she realized that didn't really explain anything. "You know...paranoid. Always ready to think the worst of anyone different. The 'us or them' philosophy was prevalent – either death for us or death for them. Or both. Surrendering and trying to make peace aren't even options. That sort of thing."

"And...how do you know all this?" he wondered.

"It was clearly reflected in their spaceship's computer design," Jenny informed him.

"Morals can be reflected in a computer?"

"Yes!" She answered, surprised he hadn't noticed it; he'd been working with the computer as much as she had. She sighed in exasperation and went on. "When you arrived, the ship automatically started shooting – it didn't even bother to tell me first. Later, when you so much as _touched_ a weapon, again, it started shooting without needing consent.

"Admittedly, those were procedures for people who were on the ship without permission and so probably constituted some sort of threat. Eliminating threats is, at any rate, an understandable course of action. However, when we were about to crash land on Earth, what did the ship do? It turned on all the shields and didn't bother about anti-gravity. And why? Because anti-grav can't be shielded, so using it might alert the planet to your presence. They'd rather die in crash than let an unknown planet know they're there." Jenny finished, disgusted with the colonists. "I could go on. I found plenty of procedures like while we were reprogramming it."

"So, no more killing off innocent people who teleport in by accident?"

Jenny raised an eyebrow. "Are you calling yourself innocent?"

He laughed. "Are you calling me guilty?"

She shrugged. "Someone disabled the vortex manipulator, Jack. I'm guessing they probably did it for a reason."

"Anyway," Jack said quickly. "To Messaline?"

"Yeah..." said Jenny slowly. Speaking of guilt and innocence, she supposed she wasn't exactly innocent in the eyes of the other Messalinites.

"Or...not?" Jack seemed slightly put off by her lack of enthusiasm.

"No, we're going," she answered firmly. "I'm just not sure...what the reception will be like. For me."

"Because you stole their ship and then crash landed on Earth 4000 years ago and used the parts to build a time machine?" Jack asked.

Jenny stared at him. She didn't remember ever mentioning that she'd stolen the spaceship. "Er...yeah. How did - ?"

"Lucky guess," he interrupted, grinning.

"Right," she said quietly. "Messaline it is."

**A/N: So...as this next "episode" will be a return to Messaline, I watched the Doctor's Daughter again the other day and learned that Jenny did not actually steal the colonists' spaceship. She took the shuttle. Why did no one point this out to me?**

**How she expected to actually _get_ anywhere in a small shuttle is anyone's guess. I'm assuming that space shuttles that are attached to big ships are meant for planetary or perhaps inter-planetary travel, but it seems to me that something larger would be needed for inter-star travel. (Which is what she was wanting). But I could be wrong. **

**Anyway, as there's no way for me to fix it now, for this story, Jenny took the whole ship.**

**Please review!**


	13. Return to Messaline: Part 1

**Becoming a Time Lady**

**Disclaimer: I don't own Doctor Who or Torchwood. Also, I've recently decided that I don't like the character and place names I usually come up with, so I'm going to try this thing where I adapt names from other sources. For example, the character "Perine" in this chapter got his name from the character "Pirenne" from Foundation by Isaac Asimov. I don't own any of these other sources either.**

_**Return to Messaline: Starlight**_

Messaline, shortly after the Doctor left:

"_Isn't it _beautiful_?" Perine sighed breathily. Shalis glanced into the sky nervously, not _quite_ seeing where her friend and machine-brother was coming from. Of course, they'd both been born in darkness and war, but even from the few minutes of conversation they'd managed to have in between battles, Shalis knew that Perine was the romantic one of them. He'd wanted to see the star's light long before there was any hope of ever being able to._

_Now, because of the unexpected terraforming, they could walk on the surface and feel the warmth from Messaline's star. Even though most of the army – _citizens_, she reminded herself, _the war is over and all the soldiers are citizens now_ – most everyone was still underground getting organized, but Perine had dragged her outside as soon as it was safe._

_Not just outside, even. They'd left the Lost Temple and found themselves in the middle of what had once been assumed to be the abandoned city. Not abandoned, they knew now – just brand new and, as yet, empty. But the tall buildings had blocked their view and so Perine had run off to find somewhere more open, forcing Shalis to either follow him or be left alone. They'd weaved their way through the street for some time before finally reaching the end of the city. Laughing delightedly, Perine had again led the way, dashing into the field of bright green grass that had just started to grow on the once-barren ground._

"_Yeah, it's great!" Shalis said quickly – and a little over-enthusiastically – when she realized that Perine was pointedly waiting for a response to his question. Actually, she didn't feel great. The natural light from the sky was so much different from what she was used to. It sort of felt...she searched for the right word... "Prickly," she murmured out loud by accident."_

"_What?"_

"_I just thought...doesn't it make your skin prickle? This light, I mean."_

_Perine frowned and held out his arms experimentally, with palms down. "Hmm...well, maybe. That doesn't seem right..."_

"_We should get back underground," Shalis said urgently. "Look! My skin's turning pink – I'm getting burned!" She sounded slightly whingy, even to herself._

_Perine sighed in exasperation. "Fine, let's go back then. They'll notice we're missing soon, anyway."_

_By this point, Shalis was really not feeling well, or she'd have realized that her friend was not completely disappointed that the outside excursion he'd wanted so much hadn't lasted very long. And the excuse that they'd be missed was ridiculous – she wasn't even sure that a complete census of everyone _existed_, and even if it did, no one could've already gone through the whole thing to discover that two people weren't there. Not in the half hour since terraforming._

_But Shalis didn't realize these things. She was more concerned with how cold she suddenly felt and how hot, by contrast, her skin felt to the touch as she drew her arms together to stop the shivering. _

"_Yeah, I think you're right," said Perine, sounding very far away. "We really should get..."_

_Shalis didn't hear any more. And she didn't even feel herself hit the ground._

* * *

On Messaline, several months later:

Sigma Theta materialized in a back alley of the city beneath which Jenny had been progenated. It wasn't likely, she thought, that there would be anyone there to see them arrive, but Jenny kept the invisibility shields on anyway and made sure to check out the windows before she and Jack left the ship.

"Huh," Jenny murmured with a slight chuckle as she stepped out.

"What?"

"I just realized. I've never actually been here," she answered, then smiled at his confusion. They began down the alley to the city proper while she explained. "On the surface of Planet Messaline. I was only ever underground, because it hadn't been terraformed. No one could go to the surface..." Jenny trailed off as they reached the main streets of the city, her mouth dropping open of its own accord.

"That terraforming, it did happen?" Jack asked quietly. "People _can_ go on the surface now?"

"Yes," she breathed faintly. "Yes, I saw it."

"Then – where is everyone?"

The street they'd come out on was completely deserted. The sky, visible between buildings, was bright blue and the light from Messaline's star made the brand-new walls gleam, but there was no movement, no sound that they themselves did not make.

Jenny saw the tall spaceship silo where the colonists' ship had been housed (before she'd stolen it). It wasn't too far way. "Come on," she said, pointing it out. "Let's go there." There was no particular reason why there should be anyone _there_ if there was no one _here_, but it was the last place she'd seen anyone and – if nothing else – it was a place she knew.

The fairly short trip was, at least for Jenny, a little bit eerie. These were streets she definitely _didn't_ know – except that she already had a map of them in her head from the machine, so in some sense she knew every corner. Both that contradiction and seeing the city unnaturally devoid of life made her all the more eager to get somewhere familiar.

Jack and Jenny reached the silo about five minutes later. It was then, for the first time, that the silence of the city was broken. A loud screeching sound echoed up and down the boulevard. Jenny – as she clapped her hands to her ears – vaguely attached to the word "feedback" to the noise. It was feedback from something. It cut off suddenly to be replaced by one word.

"Jenny?"

Dropping her hands slowly, Jenny glanced at Jack. "Well, someone here knows who you are, anyway," he said and she nodded.

"Jenny!" The voice repeated, more urgently. Mechanical interference had rendered the speaker unrecognizable, so even if Jenny did know the person, she couldn't identify him – or for that matter, her; even the gender was impossible to distinguish.

"Yes?" she replied cautiously. "Who's there?"

"Jenny, you have to come inside!" When she hesitated, the voice added. "I mean _now_!"Quietly, Jack tapped her shoulder and gestured to a loudspeaker that was mounted to a nearby building. She nodded, realizing that was where the disembodied voice was coming from. "Oh, for -" It began, but cut off.

Seconds later, the door to the silo slid open and, to Jenny surprised, the soldier named Cline ran out. "Come on!" he cried, grabbing her hand. "We've got to get inside!"

"Please tell me the war isn't back on," Jenny muttered as she and Jack followed him. Once inside, Cline shut and barred the door with a crash. He relaxed, sighing with relief as a number of other people – both human and Hath – came out of various shelters only once the door was securely closed. Then Cline turned back to her and unexpectedly embraced her tightly.

Jenny hugged back, a bit perplexed, watching over his shoulder as Jack's expression turn to confusion. _No, I know, this isn't exactly the reception I was prepared for_, she thought. After flashing him a small, reassuring smile, she pulled away from Cline. "Good to see you, too?" she said, unable to keep the question completely out of her tone.

If Cline heard it, he gave no indication. "Jenny! Thank the Great One you're back!" he said fervently.

"'The Great One'?" she repeated, slightly taken aback but mostly amused. "You do know that was a myth, right?"

"Sure, but we've gotta swear on something," Cline answered with a half-shrug. "Might as well be Her. Some of the others swear by the Doctor, but that's mostly people who never had any direct interaction with him. Or have been progenated since and never met him at all."

A man with light brown, crew-cut hair spoke softly to Cline. "It's not long before noon, sir – the star will be directly above us in no more than a few minutes. We should move out."

As Cline nodded grimly, Jack voiced the question that had been on the tip of Jenny's tongue. "Why does it matter where the star is?"

Cline looked at him as though only then seeing him for the first time. After a short pause, he replied. "When the star is overhead, there won't be any shade in here." He pointed up and Jenny looked to see that the silo was open to the sky. "I'll explain on the way, but Gel's right – we have to go, and now." With that, they were hurried down the very passage that the Doctor had used to get to the spaceship in the first place.

"So, who're you?" Cline asked Jack.

"Captain Jack Harkness. And you?"

"Cline. Major, Generation six-six-seven-oh."

"What's going on, Cline?" Jenny asked, ignoring the brief introductions. "Not another war?" How the position of the planet's star would matter in a war, she wasn't sure, but anything was possible.

"No," he said with a grimace. "It's not a war. It's worse than that...it's...well, part of the problem is that we're not exactly sure _what_ it is. A plague, or something. Up there." He glanced toward the city above them nervously.

Jenny frowned. "It there were any bacteria or viruses that could cause serious illness out there, then they should've shown up in the initial scans of the planet," she pointed out. "The terraforming would kill any that it could and if there were anything it didn't get, then the city would go into lockdown and everyone would be given immunity shots before being let out. There are protocols for this – how can there be a plague?"

Cline stared at her. "We had to dig through computer files for weeks before we learned about those procedures...and that was after it started. How did you know all that?" He didn't give her a chance to answer. "Anyway, as far as we can tell, it's caused by the light from Messaline's star, Lux, not a bacteria or virus. It's not even an illness, really. Doesn't seem to be contagious, at least."

"Great One be blessed for _that_," muttered one of the others.

"You're saying a lot about what this _isn't_. But what _is _it, Major?" Jack asked impatiently and Jenny didn't blame him. Cline was acting as though to speak of...whatever this was...was to make it more likely to happen to them; he was talking slowly and cautiously, even as the hurried along the tunnels. The explanation was, as a result, taking a lot longer than she would've wanted.

They came to the passage crisscrossed with lasers that Jenny had flipped through last time. No need for that now, but they did have to wait as someone typed in a password. In the pause, Cline answered the question. "Aging," he whispered. "All we really know is that if anyone stays in the star's light for too long, they start aging at an unnatural rate and soon die...of old age."

* * *

_Perine was panicking as he helped Shalis stagger back to the city. She seemed mostly unconscious – able to put one foot in front of the other, but_ barely_ able and only with encouragement._

_After what seemed like forever, they finally made it back. "Help!" Perine called as soon as they were back at what had so recently been the human army's base. "Please, help!" Shalis was out completely now and her weight dragged them both to the ground. Perine looked around frantically. Who was in charge now, since Cobb's arrest?_

"_What's wrong? What's happened?"_

_Perine vaguely recognized the man who'd appeared in front of him asking questions. "Major Cline! I don't know what happened, she just...I mean, I – well, we –" His words faded into incoherence and he started crying too hard to speak._

_Cline called for someone to come care for Shalis, but during the war, medical ability had not been valued – it was easier to progenate new, healthy soldiers than to help the injured. There had never been any doctors among them, that Perine knew of (save _the Doctor_, of course, but he had gone) and not even any medics. There were a few people willing to try though and Cline himself sat down next to Perine. "Now, I need to know what happened to her," he said gently._

"_But I don't know, really!" Perine cried. He explained what had happened as best he could, but was sure that he'd left out something important or mixed things up in such a way that the Major wouldn't be able to understand anything. _

_When Cline decided that he probably knew as much as Perine could tell him, he stood again and went to check on Shalis, Perine following closely. "Shalis?" he cried, horrified, as he saw her again. In the few minutes that it had taken to tell the story, she had gone from looking rather sick to looking fifty years older. Her skin, which had been slightly pink, was now a much darker tan and wrinkly. He cautiously reached out to touch her arm and found that she felt horribly rough and leathery. "She's so thin," he whispered._

"_She's drying out, but she won't take water," one of the women who'd come to look after her told Cline. "And she's losing weight rapidly. I don't..." She spread her hands wide, looking helpless. "I don't think she's going to live much longer. How – how did this happen?"_

* * *

Cline had spent the rest of their trip describing their first encounter with this condition. The base camp turned out to be the theatre, just like when the Doctor had been here. "We've stayed here because it's one of the easiest places to keep dark," Cline explained. "The windows aren't very big and they were made to be covered during plays. All the light can be kept outside, keeping us safe."

"Knowing that one victim of this...'condition' spent an hour on the surface is not enough information to assume that it's cause by the starlight," Jack pointed out.

"No," Cline admitted. "But we definitely knew it came from the surface, even then. Before Shalis and Perine returned, we'd sent out scouts before moving to the city entirely. Just a precaution, left over from starting out in the midst of a war. None of them ever came back. When we got control of the camera system, we managed to find some of their bodies. There was no doubt that it was exactly the same thing.

"At first, we thought there was something wrong with the atmosphere and tried making everything air tight, but that was a bit useless – there have been venting systems to the surface since the city was built. There was never anything wrong with breathing up there, even before terraforming. When people in front of windows started having the same problem, it became pretty obvious. They all said the light felt prickly, just like Shalis had. And we've got conclusive evidence otherwise, too..."

Jenny and Jack waited for him to continue, but he glanced at the man he'd called Gel. "Uh, after the theory that this was caused be Lux was put forward...I decided to go outside that night."

"Without permission," interjected Cline. "There'd been orders that no one was to go outside for any reason. He left a suicide note."

"It wasn't suicide. It was an experiment," Gel told him, sounding affronted. "I went out just after starset and stayed until just before dawn. Hours, I stayed out there, but nothing affected me. Because it was night and Lux was hidden."

"The note?" Jenny asked.

"To let us know what happened," Cline said. "In case he didn't come back. But, I mean, he _did _come back. And that was weeks ago now and he's still fine. It's gotta be Lux, right?"

Jack was unconvinced. "This Perine spent just as much time on the surface as Shalis, but she got it and he didn't. Maybe it doesn't affect everyone. Maybe Gel could live on outside during the day and it wouldn't make a difference."

"It doesn't affect everyone in the same way, sure," agreed Cline. "Some die in minutes, some hours. Some don't start the aging process until long after noticing the prickle. Perine didn't get off easy though. He's been afflicted for nearly a month now."

"You mean, he's still alive?" Jenny inquired. "He's sick, but alive?"

"Can we see him?" Jack added.

They were led to the far corner of the room, as far from the covered windows as possible. "It might help to keep him over here," Cline told them. "He's the only one to survive this long. Could be the location – which we never thought to try before – or it could just be him."

The man on the cot lay half-hidden in shadows, but even so, Jenny could tell that his hair was pure white and his face was so covered by wrinkles that it was difficult to make out facial features. She glanced at Jack, who was appraising Perine calculatingly. "Jenny," he murmured. "Would you mind if I talked to him alone for a few minutes?"

She was slightly confused by the request, but shook her head – no, she wouldn't mind – and turned back to Cline. "Do you think you can help?" He asked her worriedly. "I mean, you said you were going off to...save the universe or something..."

"The universe?" She smiled. "Haven't quite got _there_ yet. But...well, I don't _know_ if I – " a brief pause as she shot a quick look towards Jack " – if _we_ can help here, but we can certainly try."

**A/N: (The following paragraphs include information that have been released about this year's Doctor Who Christmas Special. If you, like me, consider such information to be spoilers, don't read them.)**

**Ok, this chapter was supposed to be a bit longer than than it is, but there is something that I need to address. As you probably know, Matt Smith is confirmed to be leaving Doctor Who on Christmas; they will be revealing the next actor, um, tomorrow. I very much dislike this. I don't _want_ to know who the next Doctor will be - I don't want to know until Matt Smith regenerates into him. So, I've made it a personal challenge to keep myself from spoilers until then. This will probably be unsuccessful (my friends have predicted that I'll last three days at the most). Oh well, I can still try.**

**Anyway, I request that, if you happen to read this just after seeing the announcement and are excitedly wanting to mention it in a review...well, please don't? You can mention how excited you are, I just don't want a name. Thank you!**

**And do, please, review!**


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